What happened to the Jazz's defense in the clutch?


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SALT LAKE CITY — The Jazz were pretty bad in close games last year. In particular, a 14-28 record in games when the score was within five points within five minutes on the clock essentially cost the team a playoff spot.

I've written about this before, and Jazz watchers shouldn't be particularly surprised. In that article, I referenced the Jazz's really poor defense in those clutch situations: overall, they were the seventh-best team in the league on that end, but during the clutch, they slipped to the 28th spot: only Phoenix and Philadelphia were worse. They gave up 121.3 points per 100 possessions last year in those critical 203 minutes, when the average team gave up 105 points per 100 possessions. Clearly, the defense needs to improve next year, but how?

I've talked with and listened to a bunch of people around the Jazz and the NBA on this issue. Together, we came up with a few possible explanations to test with the data.

Was it because they were starting behind?

On May 24, David Locke's Tip-Off podcast featured research done by listener Russell Dickson on the Jazz's starting points in the close games. He broke down the 14-28 record mentioned above and found that the Jazz started the majority of those games in a losing position.

  • When starting the five minute period ahead: 8-7
  • When starting the five minute period tied: 3-4
  • When starting the five minute period behind: 3-17
Starting from behind would be a significant disadvantage late in the game for a few reasons. First of all, being down very late in games means you have to foul, which means that opposing teams get to the line for easy shots. Being down also may make you more aggressive in gambling for turnovers than normal.

But the data doesn't show that these issues affected the Jazz more than other teams. The Jazz sent teams to the line at the 11th-highest rate late in games, but that's not very different than average. Adjusting for that only accounts for about four points per 100 possessions, enough to make them, say, the 26th-worst team instead of the 28th-worst team. Not inspiring. They also got only the 8th-fewest turnovers of teams in clutch situations, so it wasn't that they were going all out for steals.

Sure, the Jazz started a lot of the games they lost with deficits already. Sure, even with better play, they may still have lost these games. But even given that, they should have played better defense during the last few minutes, regardless of game position.

Was it because they went small at the end of games?

One trend that frustrated me a little bit at the end of the season was the Jazz's penchant for ending games with a small lineup on defense. For example, in their 2-point loss to the San Antonio Spurs on April 5, the Jazz ended the game by playing without Derrick Favors for the last 8 minutes of the game (though that may have been due to injury). On April 8 in an overtime loss to the Clippers, Rudy Gobert didn't play the last 9:54.

My thinking was that the Jazz's defensive excellence and identity was in no small part based on the tandem of Favors and Gobert playing together. Why abandon them in the final minutes?

And then I looked at the data: lineups with Favors and Gobert playing together normally allowed just 102.2 points per 100 possessions, but in the fourth quarter, that ballooned to 112.9 points per 100 possessions. Out of 70 pairings that played more than 30 minutes together in the fourth, Favors-Gobert finished sixth worst. I was wrong.

By the way, I found it interesting to discover which pairings were worse than Favors-Gobert.

Data from stats.nba.com.
Data from stats.nba.com.

Note a common denominator? Trevor Booker's defense was actually pretty solid throughout the first three quarters, but in the fourth, team defense with Booker on the floor absolutely cratered. Maybe fatigue was an issue here.

Was it because of refereeing?

Ah, the NBA's Last Two Minute reports. I've written about theseextensively. The basic conclusion: the NBA's own reporting shows that the Jazz are losing points due to incorrect calls at the end of games more than any other team.

Now, how much of an impact did that make? Well, it's hard to tell from a win-loss perspective, but easier to tell from a defensive efficiency perspective. The Jazz had 12 more calls go against them than in their favor in the last two minutes of close games last season. The reports total 113 minutes of the 203 minutes the Jazz were within five points with five minutes left. In those 203 minutes there were about 409 defensive possessions.

Let's guess that about half of these missed calls hurt the Jazz on the defensive end of the floor (the data shows that this is about right, for the L2M report period, anyway). With some assumptions and math, we can extrapolate and say that the Jazz can safely blame about 2-4 points per 100 possessions of that defensive rating on refereeing differences. It helps, but it doesn't explain it all.

Was it because of switching?

This was another idea I heard. Basically, because opposition offenses slow way down at the end of games, the Jazz changed their defensive strategy as well. Instead of fighting through and maintaining preferred defensive matchups, they chose to switch many pick and rolls at the end of close games. Maybe they weren't very good at this part of defense?

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down the data on how good the Jazz were at defending pick and rolls last year when they chose to switch last season. I have watched every 2015-16 minute of Jazz clutch defense, though, and I can report a few basic impressions, along with some video.

  • They definitely did switch more picks at the end of games, especially late in the shot clock.
  • When they executed the switch well, this seemed to be a relatively good defensive strategy. The Jazz weren't overwhelmingly burned by mismatches on the perimeter or otherwise.
  • But sometimes there was a lack of communication on whether or not the players should switch. See this play, for example, from the December 13 game against OKC. Booker and Hayward have some disagreement on whether the switch is necessary, then Kevin Durant takes advantage of having the matchup on Booker. > Since it's the offseason, let's grab the video in HD. pic.twitter.com/Mguh4wcj2A
    — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) August 16, 2016
Luckily, Favors covers up Durant pretty well here, but that puts him in a tough spot to grab the offensive rebound. More on that later. I think the switching confusion should improve next season, as everyone gets a little clearer on what should happen and when.

Was it because they were a young team?

We've all heard it before: young teams need to learn how to win. The Jazz were the fourth-youngest team in the NBA last year, and maybe they needed to learn how to win close games?

Well, there's not a lot of actual evidence for the assertion that young teams underperform in clutch situations. See this graph from Kevin Pelton's Basketball Prospectus days. There's just no correlation between team age and performance in close games.

From Basketball Prospectus.
From Basketball Prospectus.

Was the defensive rebounding bad?

The defensive rebounding was bad. The Jazz allowed the third-highest offensive rebounding rate against them in clutch situations. Overall, they allowed the 23rd-highest offensive rebounding rate. This made a big difference: it essentially gave opponents four extra chances per 100 possessions in clutch situations.

Why was it bad? I don't really know. Looking at the worst culprits, lineups featuring the departed Trey Burke and Booker performed the worst in terms of defensive rebounding in the fourth quarter. But even the big Favors-Gobert lineups weren't great at this, and too frequently, it seemed like they were outmuscled for the ball, or were only able to tip it when they needed to grab it with both hands. Bounces seemed pretty cruel, and a few times the Jazz were on the wrong end of spectacular plays by athletic superstars like Russell Westbrook and Draymond Green.

Gang rebounding would help. Shelvin Mack's emergence as the starter did help the situation, but they'd probably like more of a contribution from Gordon Hayward and Rodney Hood on these crucial defensive boards.

Were they just unlucky?

This is probably the explanation I heard most. When Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey was asked about the team's performance in close games, he responded, "We're just hoping odds take care of that. Usually, if you play enough close games, (the margin) will get back to zero."

That's basically true. In that same Kevin Pelton study we looked at earlier, there's another graph that compares close game performance from one year to the next. See any correlation here?

What happened to the Jazz's defense in the clutch?

In short, when a team performs badly in close games one year seems to have no consistent bearing on whether they perform badly in close games in the next year.

And you can point to ways in which the Jazz were just statistically unlucky last season. The Jazz allowed 40.2 percent shooting from beyond the arc, the fourth worst percentage in the league. There's statistical evidence that 3-point percentage allowed is largely influenced by luck. They allowed an above average percentage on clutch free throws, too, which probably contributed to about a point to the Jazz's poor defensive rating late.

203 minutes is a pretty small sample size, too. That's the number that I keep coming back to, personally. Imagine you were coach Quin Snyder, and the Jazz played about four games in which the team allowed a 121 defensive rating. You'd be concerned, and you'd probably take steps in practice to improve the team. But it wouldn't be enough that you'd demand roster changes, call for a soul-searching team meeting, or anything like that.

For the 2016-17 season, the Jazz should address their clutch performance, but not overreact. Communicating better on defense, working on gang rebounding, continuing to work with the NBA on the refereeing, along with the improvement in the rest of the roster, should in all likelihood mean much improved close game defensive performance in 2016-17.

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Andy Larsen

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