Pick and roll is the bread and butter for Utah Jazz offense, leading to corner 3s and Rudy Gobert forts. In fact, he is the best team in the NBA at the play. But what types of pick and roll are most effective for the Jazz, and how does it vary depending on who owns the ball?
We get a little nerdy and dig into the Synergy Sports stats. Basically, Synergy pays people to watch every game and keep track of what happened on each property. Let me show you an example.
An example of a Synergy Sports play from Jazz / Warriors Sunday.
You read the plays as they happened. So the play up at the top involves Mike Conley running a pick and roll from the left. He dribbling down the baseline, then found Bojan Bogdanovic in the corner. Bogey moved to the left, then took three, and missed it. However, on Jazz’s next play – Conley’s pick and roll from top to bottom – Bogdanovic moved right after Conley kicked him out, and caught a short jump shot that went into it.
If you keep track of all the play throughout the season, as Synergy does, you get some cool stats that start to gain at player effectiveness in different situations.
To be clear, the stats are not perfect. If Bogdanovic had instead kicked the ball out to Donovan Mitchell, who attacked on their own, Conley and Bogdanovic would not have received any credit for the selection and the roll, even if it meant the main a change that would allow Mitchell to score. Synergy only monitors the plays that end up owning – once the defense is done “intact”, or everyone is in a reasonably good defensive position, reset the whole thing. And of course, you rely on the input of a player who sometimes makes mistakes.
So, in general, just add some basic common sense to those stats. As always, we are less certain about small differences between players than we are about large differences between players. Is Damian Lillard (29.7 points per game) a better scorer than Steph Curry (29.2 points per game)? It’s hard to say for sure, but we know for sure that both of them are better scores than Jrue Holiday (15.3 points per game).
First, let’s take a look at the five Jazz ball handlers – Conley, Mitchell, Bogdanovic, Jordan Clarkson and Joe Ingles.
As you can see, the Jazz has five excellent or excellent ball handlers, all of whom are in the top third of the league at the run of the play. This is the single biggest key to Jazz crime being an elite.
Mitchell uses the most pick and roll on the team. It is also the smallest of the five, although it is still above average. Meanwhile, Conley runs second, Ingles third, Clarkson fourth, and Bogdanovic rarely runs them.
Interestingly, the efficiency in order is inconsistent in terms of the frequency with which they run selections and rolls. There are two ways to look at this: either the Jazz have to back down their offense, or the Jazz go to Mitchell and Conley more often in tougher situations – at the end of the clock, at the end of games , and against good defense. It seems like a second one, but you can make a case that the real answer is somewhere.
We can also use this data to get an idea of how players use the selection and rolls in a different way. This is how often each player passes vs how often they shoot.
It’s pretty much what you would expect! Jordan Clarkson fires most of the time, as does Donovan Mitchell. At the same time, Joe Ingles rarely finishes shooting – he’s always looking pass-first.
In fact, we can dig it down even further. How often does each Jazz ball handler make what type of pass in their pick and roll positions? Are they lobbying him to Rudy Gobert or kicking him to Royce O’Neale?
Mitchell and Conley are really kicking it, as you know Ingles is usually looking for the lob. Bogdanovic, when he passes, almost always passes on the outside, and Clarkson has a good mix of his passes, in fact.
But how well do Jazz ball handlers make plays in all these types of passes? What is the best thing to do for each player? I take passes to cutters out of the mix, because the sample size is so small. Scroll across each bar to learn more about the category.
Very interesting! First of all, I want to shout out the incredible effectiveness of Ingles in hitting the roll man, and Jordan Clarkson ‘s effectiveness in doing it all – very impressive. Mike Conley has a very good passer, but may not be as effective as a signer. Bogdanovic’s sample size is small, but good. (Honestly, he’s alone and attacking a closure that puts him in trouble, but more on that in a future article.)
The numbers I really like are in Donovan Mitchell’s card. When he kicks the ball out to a spot hunter after a lift and roll, he is terrible offense: the Jazz gets 1.3 points for every 100 possessions there. We’ve seen Mitchell do these kinds of reel-readings all season, and they’re amazing and effective.
But when he tries to go it alone, it is not very effective. While 0.88 points per possession is not a disaster, it is completely average among league players in pick and roll situations. To move in, let’s take a look at what happens when Mitchell shoots or contaminates these types of plays:
This, again, passes the eye test. When Mitchell takes a calm, controlled look at a jump – one that is very likely worth 3 points – the math is much more favorable. When it comes to a mid-range runner, it’s less efficient. When it gets all the way to the edge, it’s somewhere in between.
That’s part of the trade-off in the situation: if Mitchell is there always they took the dribble jersey, teams might not turn to defense, and his passes would not go out to spot hunters who are the cause of such an effective offense. So it’s kind of a difficult balance, although I suspect you could just eliminate most of the runners – they don’t scare anyone.
Overall, the Jazz are in a very good position when it comes to their pick-and-roll attack. They have five players capable and efficient of running the play. Against teams with poor fringe defense, Ingles is probably the man who plays the most of the play, getting layups on the left and lobs to Gobert and Favors all day. Against teams that fall and help? Mitchell and Conley are most effectively kicked out and found the 3-point shooter.
Play elite pick-and-roll and the Utah Jazz? Everything is new again.