Jazz versus Luck

-- Why do the Jazz suck at playoff threes?

The 2019 Jazz-Rockets playoff series is remembered for two things.

1. The Jazz defending James Harden ... from behind (still weird these few years later)

2. Ricky Rubio shooting a decisive, wide-open three in the final minute of game 5

The Jazz were down one with a minute left in game five when Donovan found Ricky uncovered in the corner. I rose from my couch in anticipation. The ball rose from Ricky's fingers. We were a corner three away from sending the series back to Salt Lake down three games to two. 

We've all been Ricky Rubio pic.twitter.com/sFXmEKZcDS

— Dan Greenberg (@StoolGreenie) April 25, 2019

Ye gods. 

Sadly Ricky's shot wasn't the first uncontested three that the Jazz woofed on during this series. 

Per Second Spectrum, the Jazz have a 56.3 quantified shot quality in the playoffs, the best of any team. Utah is 12-of-64 (18.8%) on wide-open 3s (no defender within 6 feet), the worst of any team in the last five postseasons. https://t.co/5zk6BfRyA4

— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) April 23, 2019

It's fair to say that Jazz leadership reacted strongly to this information. How could they not?!? Shooting 19% on wide-open threes is abominable. And so the next three big transactions from the Jazz were all moves to give away defenders (Rubio, Crowder, Exum) in exchange for players who would  make those wide-open threes (Conley, Bogey, Clarkson).

I was hopeful for the Bogey signing. I was sad to see Exum go. I crapped all over the Conley trade. Giving up two first round picks for someone who was five times worse on defense than Rubio and only 1.25 times better on offense seemed like a bad deal to me. Also giving up two first round picks to get a player who would cockblock Donovan from playing point guard seemed like a bad deal to me. I'm sure this all sounds like hindsight history writing, but believe it or not I have the receipts. My texts are in green.

Is what I said true? That the only way you could call trading for Conley a success was if the Jazz made a Western Conference Finals? Yeah I think so. Having the best record in the NBA in '20-'21 was pretty cool, and hey if we were playing soccer in England then the Jazz would have a championship for their efforts. But giving away two shots in the draft for a player who has missed 30% of the playoff games he's been eligible for; who has made 7 shots compared to 10 turnovers in three elimination games; who gets driven by without the need of even a pretend screen; who has averaged a Bryon Russell-esque 12 points per playoff game on 38% shooting outside the bubble; that's bad business.

But I'm getting away from the whole point of this post. The Jazz were so heavily impacted by the fact that they couldn't hit open shots in the 2019 Houston series that they went all in on offense. The blender could generate open threes at will. They just needed players who could make them. 

Against Dallas, it didn't work and soccer can explain why. Soccer has made popular a sports statistic called expected goals, which I tied to BYU's defense with gusto back in 2020. The gist is that enough data now exists that a model can measure where a player is on the floor, how many dribbles he's taken, how stable he is, where the defenders are, how much time is left in the shot clock, and a whole myriad of other things and churn out an expected chance of that attempted shot going in. To wit: the database may tell us an off-balance three-point shot in the corner with two defenders in your face has gone in 29% of the time over the last 15 years, and therefore is worth an expected .87 points per shot (3 points multiplied by 29%). On the other hand, a catch-and-shoot three-point shot in the corner from an uncovered shooter may go in 52% of the time, and therefore be worth an expected 1.56 points per shot. 

In basketball people refer to this as shot quality. Second Spectrum -- not to be confused with Sectumsempra, my fellow Potter fans -- is the NBA's official tracking technology which measures shot quality, but they only release their results to rich folk. Meanwhile, the twitter account @Shot_Quality is doing the Neismith's work, sharing for free the expected points each playoff team should score based on the quality of shots they are generating. 

Check out the results from game three of the Jazz-Mavs series. The Mavs beat the Jazz by 8 (126 to 118), but based on the looks each team generated, on average history would have expected the Jazz to score 119 and the Mavs to score 111. 

For the entire series, the Jazz were straight unlucky. The model expected them to score 643 points across the six games they played; in reality they scored 594, or 49 less than expected. Dallas on the other hand was right on average. They scored 628 points and were expected to score 631 points. 

Two years ago the Jazz got so discouraged by their inability to hit an open three that they swung the pendulum from defense to offense. Their defense is now worse; much much worse. And somehow when it counts the most, their offense isn't much better. 

Once again it was an elimination game. 

Once again it was an open three. 

Once again the shot wasn't even close. 

This shot by Bojan Bogdanovic at the end of regulation had a 40.7% expected field goal percentage (1.22 SQ PTS). Hard to get a better look than that to force a Game 7.

It's going to be a long offseason in Utah 😬😬pic.twitter.com/temI7kgLWJ

— ShotQuality (@Shot_Quality) April 29, 2022