Coach Spins' Clipboard: The New Jazz Star, Depth in New Orleans, and Mobley's Next Steps
A look at NBA action and observations on the Pelicans young guns, Phoenix-Golden State, Evan Mobley, and more
There are several rules to watching early-season basketball that need to be fully understood to appreciate what we watch in October and November. They are universal truths with absolute validity… except for when they aren’t true or valid.
Several of those rules are as follows:
The standings don’t matter until Thanksgiving. Like… don’t even look at them. Just don’t check! Until we get a feel for how good everyone else on the schedule is, don’t overreact to one or two games.
Coaches are still tinkering with rotations. Young guys either are buried on benches because they “haven’t earned it” or are getting courtesy reps to “get them comfortable and explore what they can give”.
Coaching staffs are spending more time trying to figure out who they are internally, not tailoring their gameplan to the individual opponent. The only exception comes from teams that have continuity and are already aware of who they are/ what they have.
Nobody is “washed” if they’re a veteran and struggle out of the gates. The fresh legs of the younger bodies may fade as the season goes. Give them time and remember that for many of those guys, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
That feels like the fine print of NBA-watching. Most won’t read the fine print and will instead tear off the label and ingest whatever they desire. “Our team is 1-4? Garbage, break it up.” “4-1 and a surprise start? The national media is sleeping on us!”
But the fine print provides important context. You learn more about the questions these teams are asking themselves when you view rotations as potential answers, not the encompassing nature of definitive plans. You see the new areas players are placed in and the emphases of their offseasons — old dogs learning new tricks and new puppies finally becoming potty trained.
This week’s notes on the clipboard bounce around the league to look at all areas: new developments from veterans, troublesome lack of improvements from youngsters, coaches tactically pressing the right buttons, and the importance of rotational depth already coming into focus.
Monty Williams, the Dissector
When healthy, the Golden State Warriors are always the title favorites. They’ve made 6 of the last 8 NBA Finals, won 70% of their regular season games 3 times, and will go down as one of the most dominant dynasties ever. Few teams have figured out the formula for beating them, and even fewer have the personnel to make it happen.
On Monday night, the Phoenix Suns throttled Golden State 134-105. The 134 points are the most the Dubs have given up in a regulation contest with Curry, Green and Thompson all in the lineup since January 2019, almost four years ago.
So how did Phoenix do it? A brilliant gameplan from Williams and tremendous shot-making and execution from the Suns’ players. The formula was simple in that Williams identified two areas to punish Steve Kerr’s personnel-dependent defense. Against switches, they’d aggressively roll their bigs to the front of the rim and gift-wrap them easy lay-ins. Against Drop coverage, Phoenix would let their offensive stars attack the space and hit runners or mid-ranges.
Kerr was really protective of Kevon Looney and James Wiseman, the two true centers on the lineup. The goal was to avoid switching those guys when possible — or at least Wiseman; Looney started switching and changed by the second half. Wiseman was poor with his angles, over-retreating and letting great mid-range scorers get comfortably to their spots. Early buckets in the lane got Devin Booker going, and Chris Paul was able to be aggressive in an area he’s always been comfortable.
The mid-ranges are the easy part. We’ve seen these Suns guards destroy teams who dare them to shoot here — it took them to the NBA Finals a few years ago. In the regular season, all things considered, it’s a shot most teams will give up. The biggest worry for Golden State is the lack of progress Wiseman has shown guarding ball screens against really good players, especially since there are relatively few other coverages to utilize him in.
For Phoenix, the real key was in figuring out how they wanted to isolate the switches. The answer for Williams: through post-ups. DeAndre Ayton finished with 16 points, and Jock Landale had an impressive 17 points in 22 minutes off the pine. Both were physical screeners that could force a switch with solid contact, then deliberately drop themselves in the lane.
Landale, in particular, made a killing here — and this is a way that other teams can use strong, rim-bound 5-men to attack the Warriors effectively.
Other times, Williams would scheme up three-man actions that happen quickly. Those are the most difficult to switch for a defense. With two guys, the communication for the switch is simple; the two will talk to each other, then execute. With three, it’s hard to know who is talking to whom and to process all the moving parts in such a short amount of time.
Ayton and Landale thrived off forcing those switches in triple actions, and Monty found ways to isolate smalls that would be screwed by the switch once they were walked down to the post:
There are so many elements that go into winning a game. The Suns were good in transition all night, shot 51% from the field, and got to the line twice as much as the Warriors. But a tip of the cap to Monty for what he did to put his players in a position to exploit Golden State in a simple manner.
ILOVEMARKKANEN
Every year, there seems to be one breakout player who we all agree is talented but somehow never saw coming. With the Utah Jazz starting 4-1, Lauri Markkanen has burst out of the gates to become the breakout sensation across the league. It’s less about what he’s doing and more about how he’s doing it.
Last year with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Markkanen took 34 dribble jumpers in the half-court, accounting for only 11% of his jump shots and shooting only 30.6% on them. Thus far in Utah, Markkanen is letting it fly off the bounce: he’s already taken 12 through five games, where about a third of his jumpers come from.
These aren’t your grandfather’s one-dribble pull-ups, either. He’s getting into the mid-range and seems to have an incredibly reliable turnaround jumper off a spin or half-spin… the Finnish judges give it a 9.4 in terms of the degree of difficulty.
This is the type of breakout we could have seen coming, though it’s hard to know what we should have anticipated with this many new pieces in Utah. This summer for the Finnish National Team, Markkanen took over 30% of his jumpers as pull-ups — a product of necessity on that team, for sure. But he was really good on them!
Give me more of this Lauri moving forward. The Jazz got a pretty historic haul for Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell in terms of draft equity, but the utility of their players long-term remained to be seen. Walker Kessler shows real promise as a rim protector and finisher. Jarred Vanderbilt can really defend and is a fun player overall. If Markkanen can be a legitimate second or third option on a good team and more than just a floor-spacer in the way he was in Cleveland (and Chicago), the Jazz are going to reboot this thing quicker than people thought.
Hell, they could even challenge for a play-in spot this year!