The Triple Team: After the regular season of Jazz ends, we check our questions about the pre-season

It was a last game that meant for neither team. The Spurs were already eliminated from the playoffs for the first time since 1997 earlier in the day, and the Jazz shot into the sixth seed based on the games that took place Wednesday night.

The only long-lasting impact this game had was often in draft position, where the Jazz could have secured the 20th pick by losing. By winning, they could finish anywhere from 20th to 24th.

But by getting at least half a bunch of some guys on the edge of the roster, we learned more about their strengths and weaknesses, and we might have a little idea about whether they can help the Jazz in the playoffs .

When evaluating guys who can fit in a playoff caliber rotation, you are not looking for the best possible scorers, you are looking for the guys who are the best to adapt to when playing in a team construction. And I thought we saw three players that could do that that would not normally sit in the rotation: Miye Oni, Jarrell Brantley, and Juwan Morgan.

Oni and Morgan show an ability to play solid positional defense, while Brantley is not a good positional defender but makes destruction with his 7-foot-1 winger. Oni’s a little light-of-frame at this point in his NBA career, while Morgan and Brantley are a little stronger. Brantley is an exceptional player – he even played point guard at the end of the first half – while Oni and Morgan just make the right play as boys with low use. Not one of the three is very good rebounders. All three are powerful-but-not-excellent shooters.

We have to reckon that the guys who had these rotating spots this season can just keep them going. Emmanuel Mudiay was hurt today, but has certainly shown some pros and especially cons in the bubble. Georges Niang has found his shot put, and that may be good enough to keep him on the floor, unless he’s just being athletically outplayed. And Tony Bradley continues to do just enough (offensive rebounding, finishing around the edge) to counter the bad (slow defensive rotations, picking up in pick and roll).

But if those last three are played out of court for one reason or another, Quin Snyder does not have to keep them there. There’s a chance that Oni, Morgan or Brantley will get a legitimate chance in a playoff series.

It was Ed Davis’ best game of the season, in just seven minutes on the floor.

The 11 points he scored in those seven minutes? A season high. He scored his first transition basket of the season. He just scored his fourth basket as the pick and roll man of the season. And he had five putback points on Thursday afternoon. That is typically his specialty, but for the season he had only 17 points all year. He had six rebounds and an assist as well.

And then he fell into a group of players while fighting for a handball, somehow hurting his knee and limping off the floor, and pointed to the air as he did so. It was honestly tragic.

Ed Davis did not deserve this. Last season he had the second-highest Defensive Real Plus-Minus of anyone in the league, was a top five rebounder per minute, was just an exceptional player for the Brooklyn Nets.

Then he signed for the Jazz, and he had a completely lost season. The Jazz had a terrible bench most of the year, but it got much better when Davis was moved out – the Jazz were outscored with 18.8 points per 100 possessions while on the floor. He was not a super-efficient defender, but the biggest problem was how he just added nothing offensive: no rolling value, no shooting value, nothing. The screening part was important: misleading the Jazz needed such desperately effective screens, but Davis never figured it out.

I’ll be jealous when Davis drops it in his next stop. I think, in retrospect, that the Jazz were a bad fit for him, precisely because of that offensive shrinkage in Snyder’s system. I did not see that coming at all. But he is now also 31, and he would not be the last player to just have a start on age related to performance. It happens.

Earlier this year, his 2-year, $ 9.7 million contract was seen as a bargain. Well, the season was bad enough that he probably represents negative value in a trade.

Davis is extremely fun – Damian Lillard once called him his favorite teammate – and any young team can bring him on board just like that for anything. But I remain shocked and sad that it did not work in Utah.

That’s all folks! That was the end of the regular season, the strangest of all time. The Jazz finished with a 44-28 record, which is almost exactly a 50-win pace.

Can Donovan Mitchell make a leap?

I know this was Mitchell’s first All-Star season, but to be honest, I think that had a lot more to do with the other guards at the Western Conference than Mitchell’s own performance. It’s hard to argue that he took a leap this season. Here are his figures per 36 minutes:

Honestly, not much has changed. He became one percent better finisher from inside the arc and a better free-throw shooter, but on fewer attempts. Everything else feels very same-y about the whole board. I think you could argue that it was a step forward, but a leap? No.

We knew four of the starters who came in this season, but we did not know if Royce O’Neale or Joe Ingles would start more games. Eventually O’Neale did that, but Ingles really struggled in a backup role, so he was moved into the starting rotation. Conley was injured enough of the season that they both started more games when they got off the bench.

Will Jazz remain defensively top-3?

Oh no, no they will not. They currently stand at 12, a shocking average performance. Rudy Gobert was sometimes elite and sometimes lacking, but more importantly, he did not come close enough to help his teammates. The bank defense was tired, Mitchell and Conley’s backlog looked small, and Ingles and Bogdanovic were often flatfooted. This was difficult.

When will Mike Conley and Rudy Gobert find chemistry?

Looking at the statistics, Conley averaged 1.3 assists per game after Gobert in October and November, and then dropped to around 1.0 assists per game level. In comparison, he averaged about two assists about two assists per game to Marc Gasol.

In other words, it never really clicked at the highest grade, and I think Conley was just focusing on taking the fleet more than looking for Gobert with the wrong direction. More than anything I think Conley’s chemistry is lacking with the rest of the team, not necessarily just Gobert, although that has improved over the course of the season.

Can Rudy Gobert break his own dunk record?

Nope. Gobert had 221 dunks this season, which is 252 on pace in a season 82 game. He had 306 in 2018-19. Teams, copying the success of the Milwaukee Bucks, spent more defensive resources this year to preserve the paint, and so Gobert’s danced off. I predicted this, actually!

How much will the Jazz use load management?

At the end of the season, a ton. Even in the mid-season back-to-backs, however, the players were restless, especially Conley.

Who will be the Jazz’s backup guard?

Mostly Emmanuel Mudiay. Jazz fans were disappointed that it was not Dante Exum, but he was not good in his Jazz minutes this season, nor did he put the world down after he was traded to Cleveland. Exum Island is at its lowest population totals ever.

And Nigel Williams-Goss was drawn as a solid option of the third string, but got just zero run: he scored four points all night for last night’s game, when he scored 10. In the end, I just understand not what his NBA skill is, and signing him on a guaranteed deal seems like a terribly strange move in retrospect given the Jazz’s lack of quality. Raul Neto was right there!

How is the second unit doing?

Oof. I thought this would go awry on average, and instead it went incredibly badly. Jeff Green and Davis were terrible in their new roles. Ingles stepped to the bench and found no success without a rolling big man. Mudiay, Niang, and Bradley were called upon to do their best, but did so at substitute levels. The actual signings of the summer were also replacement level. The Jazz’s ban costs them several games, and it’s the only problematic issue of the team going forward.

What’s Quin Snyder’s sleeve?

Nothing too crazy, it turns out. The Jazz were actually an above-average pack team in 2018-19, but slowed down this season to 24th. There were a few playful spare out-of-bounds plays made. It’s hard to criticize his rotations when it’s clear he had a lack of solid players available. They underperformed compared to expectations, though.

It was interesting to hear Snyder at bubble-ready preparations about whether he coached his team properly in the early part of the season, fearing that he might treat them more like a young, developing team than he should have. You’ve seen some of that reflected in the best of the Jazz’s bubble game, where they just leave players at work and stay comfortable in the roles, without much complexity at times. We’ll see what happens in the playoffs.

Can breadth of talent beat the best of the NBA?

Now, the breadth of talent is rapidly declining. When Conley deviated from the average starter status, Bogdanovic was injured, and the entire veteran bench imploded, the Jazz no longer had a breadth of talent. In most games, it was about whether Mitchell and Gobert could lead their team to a win, with guests appearing in performances by Conley, Ingles and Jordan Clarkson. And while Mitchell and Gobert are great talents, they are certainly not the best duo of the NBA.

The Jazz are now entering a playoff series with the Nuggets, one in which they win underdogs. I think they have a decent chance – more coverage to come here on SLTrib.com – but in the event of a miracle, it’s been a disappointing year. And that means Dennis Lindsey, Justin Zanik, David Morway and company have important work to do in the short offseason before next season begins.