STATUS CHECK – 10 Game Evaluation. What is working? RANKING the prospects. LAURI Changes.

STATUS CHECK – 10 Game Evaluation. What is working? RANKING the prospects. LAURI Changes.

competitive, cohesive, at times catastrophic. It’s the 10ame review of the Utah Jazz. Next on Locked on Jazzum. You are Locked on Jazz, your daily podcast on the Utah Jazz, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. How are you? I’m David Lock, radio voice, Utah Jazz, Jazz NBA insider. This is Locked on Jazz. It’s your daily podcast on the Utah Jazz, giving you insight, expertise, geeky numbers, and hopefully making it way better to be a Jazz fan each and every day. Thank you so much for making Locked On Jazz your first listen and for making Locked on Podcast Network the number one sports podcast network. Amazing. Thank you so much, Everydayers. You are the best. Today’s show is brought to you by FanDuel. New customers bet $5. When they win, they get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Head to fanduel.com to get started. Jazz Hawks tonight. Pretty interesting. Hawks were two and3 when Trey Young went down. Then they beat a not very good Indiana team. Lost to Cleveland. Beat Orlando. Lost to Toronto. Beat a pretty good Lakers team. Beat an okay Clippers team. throttled a dis unmitigated disaster of a Sacramento Kings team and have suddenly won four of five and have suddenly won uh six of eight. Uh is that right? Yeah. Six of eight since Trey Young went down if you count the Brooklyn game or five of seven if you don’t. Um pretty fascinating. 7 o’clock tip off. Quinn Snyder and his coaching staff who almost all were in Utah are in town. Uh, by the way, if you come to the game, you can listen. We have the It’s pretty cool. It’s lag free. Uh, that’s the coolest thing about it. We do leave you on during commercial breaks. You hear Ron and I talking back and forth. And sometimes we talk to you and sometimes we don’t. We just talk. Um, and you hear what’s going on. Uh, if you care to during commercial breaks, but uh, and that’s kind of cool. Uh, but the real thing is it’s completely lagree, so you’re on the moment as the game happens. Um, so there you go. Uh, stop by our booth at section 7 to get the details. We’re trying to make it easier for you. Hopefully, maybe even integrate it into the Jazz app moving forward. Uh, so that’s there for you. All right, here’s what I want to do. Will Hardy say he looks at everything in 10E stretches. So, throughout the year after 10ame stretches, we’ll look at it. We didn’t really have time with the Monday, Tuesday start to the games this week and then the reaction to yesterday and Ace Bailey playing so well. So, I it got pushed to today. So, we’re 11 games in, which is great because it makes us look a little better. Um, we we feel we feel a little bit better about who we are as a team. Uh yesterday we wrapped up the show Wills Wednesday with the quote from Will Hardy about it that um you know that there’s been a connectivity to the group and that there has been a competitiveness and these are like esoteric terms out there. Um but I do think that’s true. The biggest takeaway to me of the 11 first 11 games of the Jazz is one the group is really cohesive that there the the oxygen uh Sexton Clarkson Collins left. There was oxygen to be had and the guys took it. Kee took it with a leadership role. The young guys feel it. They own this. They’re they’re feeling the togetherness of this. They’re reacting when they play badly. they they in the last few years because of the tanking and everything else there were times where I don’t think these guys felt completely like connected to what was taking place and they certainly do right now. Um so I think that’s like that’s a pretty good that’s good and that has led to a general competitiveness. I mean there has been some really bad starts to games in which you know I went back and watched and it’s why Kyle I didn’t think Kyle Reanhard like literally and now he has last few games he’s been great. Um, and I didn’t think Bryce did and now he has. He’s done been great. Um, that’s part of the process. So, you know, I think I I opened with connectivity, um, competitiveness and catastrophic and truthfully at times we have been catastrophically bad. So, that’s really to me what the first 10 games is. Um, and then we’ll get into the player development and stuff. Let’s just kind of quickly review where we sit. um 10 games into the season. We’ve played so many blowouts that I actually want to use um cleaning the glass because I can use NBA stats, but then that gets into a little bit of that counts every minute. And actually, I don’t think we’ll be skewed that bad. I’ll I’ll show you the difference. Actually, there’s no need to hide it from you. So, we’re 23rd in the league offensively and defensively we rank 25th. on cleaning the glass. We’re actually 23rd and 23rd defensively. So, we’re a little better defensively. One of the things I said that I thought should be the goals for the season was to not be 30th in things. Uh, unfortunately, last year we were last in the league in turnovers and last league in forced turnovers. And I kind of thought that would be a large area of focus change because the the amount of threes being taken has become somewhat universal, which means the possession game’s even more valuable. Unfortunately, we’re heading back in that direction. We are now once again back to last in the NBA taking care of the basketball. And um and frankly, as Isaiah plays more, that will probably continue. and we’re 27th in the league at forcing turnovers. Um, now there were a bunch of goals when the year started. Um, the first one defensively was to deny the rim. That was like the number one. So, the two things that you heard will really talk about coming out of training camp were denying the rim and uh so denying the rim was one and a level of kind of offensive connectivity and pace. Um we talked a lot about pace yesterday. So, if you listen to the show, this I thought was interesting. It’s one of those segments I do this every now and I do I think it’s really interesting and then there’s no reaction to it and I’m like, “Oh, I wonder if that just felt dud like a total dud.” So that might have been a dud. Um, but I thought it was interesting at least in just the what pace is. And we’re a half second faster in the last half of games than we were in the first half of games. So I think that’s um, you know, I think that matters a little bit. All right. The second thing um, that he talked about was rim. If you look at cleaning the and and then let’s be honest about something here for a second. The Walker injury destroyed all of this. Like we might not want to kind of admit that, but the Walker injury has absolutely destroyed all of this. And the reason is cuz one, Walker was the rim defense. Nerk, Love, Philipski have are not ri defense. So, the rim defense was originally going to be Walker’s presence along with guys shifting on the baseline and that combined presence forced them to kick the ball out and we were going to give up a lot of threes and but we were not going to allow shots at the rim and then Walker gets hurt. Now, it has to be done a little bit more on the perimeter. Still all the same stuff, but you just can’t allow these straight line drives. So, here’s what’s interesting. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Jazz defense is number one in the NBA at denying shots at the rim. Now, this is not universal to everyone, but this is what the and in turn is the number one location effective field goal percentage defense. In other words, we’re forcing teams to take the lowest percentage shots by location in the NBA. So, pretty cool. like came out. Now, there are other metrics. Just in fairness, let me just be fair. Percentage of shots in the restricted area. We’re sixth. Okay. Still great. New York’s one, Oklahoma City’s two, San Antonio Victor three, Miami four, Denver five, and Utah is sixth. Still great, right? Like really great. Allowing threes, we’re allowing the fourth most of threes. So, we’ve made a conscious effort to try to not allow shots at the rim and we’re going to allow threes. And then what I think will be super pleased is if you’re using I’m using second spectrum here. We’re fourth best, what do we say? Fourth or sixth best team at at denying the rim. We allow the fourth most threes, but we’re 18th in allowing corner threes. So from a fundamental like game plan coaching standpoint, pretty good. Like really well done. And that’s this is great because this is a sign that there are defensive principles being put in place and that the fact we’ve been 30th every year, right? So that’s great. Um where do we stand? So, those are those are, you know, there’s my big my biggest positive on a team sense is we’re executing a defensive plan that they came out of camp with and and they’re generally doing it. Um, which is terrific. Um, QSQ, which is uh shot quality allowed, actual shots. We’re third, we’re the third uh we’re 18th, I think. Yeah, we’re 18th. Oklahoma City’s one, Detroit’s two, Orlando’s three. So, that’s not but that’s not terrible. Sacramento’s dead last by a large margin. Um, so are the Lakers interesting. Um, there’s also a number, by the way, how teams are shooting against you and it kind of normalizes a little bit. Uh, we’ve talked about this a lot. We’re right in the middle, so we don’t have anything going on there where like teams are shooting particularly well against us in a manner that makes you say like, oh, that’s going to come back. teams are shooting particularly badly against Denver right now and so that should come back. Keep an eye on that. Um and teams are shooting particularly well against the Hornets and the Knicks. Um and that should come back a little bit. Okay. The other one is where do we stand? Which I really don’t want to get into this too often, but let’s be honest, there is a draft pick issue here and we’re playing fairly well. We are now projected to be in the danger zone. uh SRS, which is a simple rating system of the basketball reference, has us in the danger zone. That’s next on Locked on Jazz. Today’s edition of Locked on Jazz is brought to you by Wayfair. We uh just did a little wayfairing ourselves, actually. Uh it’s pretty great site. Uh the holiday season is right around the corner, so that might be the reason you want to refresh some things. Um get your house ready. Whatever you might need, whether it’s more seating for guests, cozy new linens, fun serve wear for the holiday hosting, Wayfair’s Black Friday sale is here to help you make the space shine. And the best part, you don’t have to wait. Wayfair’s Black Friday deals are happening all month long with up to 70% on everything from sofas to spatulas. So upgrade like we just did, make the outside areas sitting better, add some other things to fill up. So go through the site. It’s easy to find pieces that actually fit your style. Nothing generic, just quality designs that feel personal. If you’ve ever hosted a family for holidays, you know how much difference a few extra touches make. Let Wayfair make it easy for you. Don’t miss out on early Black Friday deals. Head to wayfair.com now. Shop Wayfair’s Black Friday sale up to 70% off. That’s wfir.com. Sale ends December 7th. Wavefair, excuse me, wayfair.com. Thanks so much for tuning in to Locked on Jazz today and thank you for making Locked on Jazz your first listen and thank you for making Lockdown the number one sports podcast. Okay, so SRS, two things here. We have some of the teams we’ve played have like we played the Clippers, we smoked them and they’re three and eight. That was actually a warning sign of the Clippers. We played the Kings were supposed to be good, they’re three and nine. The Suns who weren’t supposed to be very good are seven and five. So that actually makes it so we’ve played those actually a good team there. The Blazers are six and five. Boston and Charlotte are six and seven and four and seven. Detroit’s great at 10 and five. Minnesota 7-4, 7-4. like the Detroit Minnesota run of three games is actually somewhat maybe the reality that you know we’re short on talent. Um we got guys are working their butts off but like established NBA talent we’ve talked about this a lot. We’re short on it. It’s not going to go away. So where do we sit? Because that draft pick thing is real. So, there’s a rating called SRS, which is a team rating that takes into account average point differential, strength of schedule, and um it’s kind of the best way to look at teams. The Jazz are suddenly have Memphis on SRS. The Jazz suddenly have Memphis, Sacramento, Dallas, and New Orleans all behind them in the West. And in the East, Brooklyn, Indiana, and Washington are all awful. 1 and 10, 1 and 10, and 1 and 11. Like, their SRS’s are by far the worst in the league. Now, the Pelicans don’t have their draft pick. So, at some point, you would think they would turn this thing around. I don’t know what’s happening in Dallas. Sacramento is going to have a fire sale and we should probably be doing a show on which players of the Sacramento Kings were interested in having. I think Memphis turns this around at some point, but does not feel like it. Josh didn’t play last night and right now we’re our SRS is has us at that point. Now remaining strength of schedule. So, remaining average strength of schedule of uh the team with the hardest strength of schedule the rest of the way is the Indiana Pacers. The team with the second hardest schedule the rest of the way is the Utah Jazz. Now, interestingly, they don’t have us as having played necessarily the hardest schedule. Sacramento’s played the hardest schedule by far and Oklahoma City’s played the easiest schedule. Oklahoma City will always play the easiest schedule because they don’t play themselves. Um, just kind of a note, right? Brooklyn, Washington, Indiana will always have the hardest schedule because they don’t play themselves. So, um, it is worth noting we have the hardest schedule in the West the rest of the way. Um, okay, one other quick check. I think we kind of did it was on the four factors before we get into the individuals. Um, and we’re doing two things unbelievably well. We’re the second best team in the league in offensive rebounding. And we’re the second best team in the league going to the free throw line. And we’re the ninth best team in the league at not fouling. Um those are great. Those are really, really great. There when we did all of our offseason interviews, we talked about the seven. So they are the seven players and if two or three of them develop, we’re in great shape. So, if the premise here is that Lowry is with us, Walker is developed into an NBA rotation player, Ace Bailey has to become a star. Like, there’s no other story here that works for us. Ace Bailey has to become a star. Um, and then two of our two or three of our other seven players have to become NBA rotation players. And offseason we did all these I did all the interviews with all the crew and kind of asked who do you have? And so I will probably get criticized for this, but I’m going to just kind of semi-rank them every 10 games because I think it’ll be interesting to see where they are and we’ll discuss where they are in the process. Um, so Keiante is obviously the story of the first 11 games of the season. I know Ace is everyone’s most exciting, but Keante is the story of the first 11 games of the season. He is a completely different player, different leader, different person, different player. His points per shot have gone from the 47th percentile to the 60th while not hitting a three. He’s gone from 1.09 points per shot attempt to 1.15. It’s fabulous. His assist rate is through the roof. It’ll probably drop a little bit now that Isaiah’s back and he’s playing with Isaiah some. Um, he has been really great. The only little outlier, there’s two outliers. His short mid-range game is at 53% which maybe it’s in the 63rd percent which he’s 13 of 19. Maybe that lasts. Excuse me, that’s uh 32 of 60. Maybe that lasts. He was at 41%. This is worth watching developmentally. That’s a major step. His rim finishing, I think, is completely legitimate and he has done a wonderful job and he’s up to 68% at the rim. His three-point shooting is not good right now. Um, some of the numbers and it’s particularly what’s interesting is his first year’s pull-up three was great. He is six of 31 on pull-up threes, 19%. His catch and shoot, he’s at 30%. If that were to last, he does not get first billing on this because you can’t be an NBA guard shooting below 30% from three. I don’t think there’s any chance that lasts. He was a slow starter shooting threes to start last year. I just there’s just he might not be a great three-point shooter, but he was 32% one year and 35% the other. It’s kind of logical he’s going to be 36 or 30%, not 27%. I’ll be stunned if that lasts. The biggest change in Keonte’s game is the amount he’s getting fouled. He went from getting fouled 12% of the times he took a shot and he’s now at 19%. He is now in the elite foul drawers of the NBA. That changes everything. So, Keante George is on the top of my list of players of our seven and really the only one that’s made a massive jump and really probably the only one I expected to have any chance to make a jump right away. Um, so this is all a little bit unfair. Um, on that the second guy on my list, interestingly, if I had to rank our seven right now, might be Walter Clayton. I like guys who make shots. And Walter Clayton is six of 13 on catch and shoot threes for 46%. and he is three of 15 on off the bounce threes for 20%. And the reason I say this is this was the number one off the bounce three-point shooter in college by a mile. This is what he does. I actually thought his cons his my concern on him coming in is whether he would take enough catch and shoots because he wants to take an off the bounce three every time and right now he’s not getting the off the bounce three off comfortably. He’s going to figure that out. I think this kid’s gonna be a bonafide shooter. I think he’s gonna have to figure out defense. Like Pton Pritchard is the worst defensive pick and roll player in the NBA right now. Maybe the worst isolation player. One of the two. I think Walt is going to always be in that kind of category where you’re he’s going to have to really be smart to figure out his defense. Um, but I think the shooting is real and I think they drafted a special shooter and he’s going to continue to be a special shooter and I have I have put him second on my list uh so far. The rest of the guys then we get into Isaiah and Kyle Filipowski and what I love about and I’m going to put Bryce in this category too. What I love about the three of them that I’ve seen the last few day games of this 10ame stretch is their se their goal this year needs to be to minimize their weaknesses so that their strengths can show. They’re all incredibly gifted. Isaiah’s ability to play with tempo and pace and is incredible. Um, Filipowsk’s passing, ball handling, uh, offensive creation, incredible. Uh, Bryson Kyle are super slow and Isaiah can’t shoot or hasn’t been able to shoot yet. Not can’t. Um, and those are their weaknesses that they have to learn how to manage to be able to be let their brilliance shine. I’m gonna go flip number three right now. um because of the fact that I’ve seen him begin one of his other weaknesses is he’s really not a good rim finisher at all. And the three times the other night he was in the paint, he brought the defenders to him, he acted like he was going to take a shot and then he flips it out for an assist for a three and got three threes out of it. He’s shooting 57% at the rim so far this year. I think he’s eight of 14. Um, his overall shooting is not good this year. I think his effective field goal percentage is 45%. But I’ve seen strong strong efforts in the right direction there. He has to be an elite offensive player. But I think we’ve that’s kind of and again I’m going to say this about Kyle and I’m going to say this about Isaiah. I don’t expect them to be a great deal better in year two than year three. They they got a lot of time in year one. And you when players from year excuse me year one to year two year players year one to year two do not get that much better. Players year two to year three do kier would be next on my list. I love what we’ve seen out of him and there just are not that many players who can come into a game and change the way a game looks. Now we haven’t seen enough of three shooting and he hasn’t had to take them. Um and eventually you have to take them. There just are about four guards in the NBA who only take five threes a game who take less than four threes a games. One’s Isa one’s TJ McConnell and um there there just aren’t many guys who do that. And so we’ll see. He’s played three games, but he changes the game when he’s on the floor. You cannot. And he’s turning it over 27%. Like it’s there’s all sorts of little things. I don’t care. Isaiah changes the game when he touches the floor and that’s pretty awesome. Um, Taylor, I’m just giving an incomplete at this point, was just getting out there. Now, the hamstring, not surprising at all that his body’s kind of revolting a tiny bit in certain ways. This is not surprising at all. So, we’ll just get, you know, I I’ve said this the whole time. I kind of think this year, literally, you don’t evaluate Taylor. That injury was that catastrophic. It set him back. He’s literally trying to get out there. Maybe after All-Star break, you do some evaluation of Taylor, but I’m going to stick to kind of what I said for this thing. Cody, obviously, we haven’t seen. And Bryce has been kind of up and down. Bryce is working his butt off the last few games and we’ve seen him put out a lot like better effort and he made some really nice plays and he tried really hard on Sensah to excuse me on Randall to to do the right thing on a play and was so frustrated when he hit the shot. You can see the care and the want to. Um the strange one he’s not shooting well, right? And uh Bryce in his first year had a stretch where he did not shoot it well and it kind of wore him out and then he got hot last year. This is going to be interesting to me to watch him and see how he comes out of this little stretch right now because he is a far better three-point shooter than he’s shown. He did by the end of the Indiana game hit four of nine. He was two of his previous 12 going into that game and missed his first three. So, he may have busted out of it already. Such a great shooter. Um, and we’ll see. I love the last two games he has four rebounds each. That’s that’s where the that’s you’ve got to be doing more than just taking shots. All right, some other geeky stuff when we come back, but that’s my list as of right now on where the sevens stand and how Lowry’s game has changed a bit. Next on Locked on Jess. Paying rent is a necessity, not necessarily fun, and often feels like you’re throwing away money. So therefore, let’s get you on built because that’s where Built comes in. Built is changing the game by turning your rent payment into real rewards you can actually use. When you pay rent through built, you earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next lift ride, or more. Because Built isn’t just about rent. It’s about rewarding you around your entire neighborhood. Built lets rent work for you. Whether it’s grabbing food at your local restaurant or heading to the gym, Built has made everyday life feel more rewarding. From your neighborhood to your travel plans, turn your rent into rewards. Start earning points around the neighborhood by going to join built.com/lockonba. But built is spelled b i lt. B- i t. No u in there. So join j o i n b i lt.comlocked onmbba. Make sure to use that link so they know we sent you. That’s joinbuilt.comna. Btbuiltlocked [Music] NBA. Today’s show is also brought to you by FanDuel, official sportsbook partner of the NBA and the official sportsbook partner of Locked On. Even if you miss a game or want to ride a hot hand, FanDuel has live bets on everything from who will score next in the to fourth quarter comebacks. You can even combine live bets in the same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. It keeps every game exciting, especially when your team’s making the late push. The FanDuel sports book tonight as the Atlanta Hawks as the favorite. I believe it was two and a half when I checked late last night to see. Let’s see where it is sitting right now. FanDuel has the Oh, yep. The Atlanta Hawks at a two and a half point favorite tonight. The Suns are four and a half point favorites over the Pacers. Cleveland seven and a half over Toronto and the Knicks are five-point favorite over the Heat while the Spurs and the Warriors play Oh, that’s a Friday night game. There’s only three games tonight uh going on and an NFL Thursday night game tonight. bringing you the Jets and the Patriots and the Pats are 12 and a half point favorite in that one. All at fanduel.com. I wanted to hit some subtle uh improvements. By the way, if you’re watching on Jazz Plus on the streaming service, you can now stream the audio as well. Uh flip the little stream button to audio. You can join me and Ron. If you’re in the arena, stop by our booth, find out how section 7 and uh Sherry or Ben will help you out to get set up with how to um get our broadcast kind of fun. All right. Uh lag free in the arena. I thought there’s something interesting on Lowry at the 10ame mark that I want to talk about. So a year ago, we really tried to have Lowry Markin become this like isolation individual self-creator. We have not played many close games, but the data shows the opposite. Percentages of his field goals assisted. His two-point field goals are being assisted at 78% of his two-point field goals. 95% of his threes. That’s not surprising. Um, he’s on pace for another 100 dunks and 200 threes, which is just a mind-boggling combination. He’s He blows my mind all the time. I mean, I really, you guys, watching him every day is just incredible. Um, but the idea that Lowry is has 75% of his field goals assisted means he really is now playing as the 7 foot Klay Thompson. But he’s shooting more twos, which you would think is a sign that he’s creating his own stuff, but that’s actually not true, right? Like we just I just showed you that like the data shows that he’s actually the opposite. he’s actually getting more of his shots off of gives and assists and things of that nature. And so I think it’s a really I’m going actually probably ask Will about it. Um 10 games through the season Lowry’s assist field goals are being assisted at 78%. I um I don’t actually have a way um I mean I can probably figure it out but um the that is not a filter on statad which is a program many of us use on season finder but like let me just kind of go to what I’ve always said is that he’s a 7 foot Klay Thompson. Klay Thompson at his peak with the Warriors had 75% of his field goals assist, two-point shots assisted. So, and right now he has 81% but he barely shoots a two. So, 75% of your two points assist means you’re either getting in turn in transition or you’re curling and back cutting and getting baskets. It’s it’s a really really crazy high number. Um, and I really can’t think of any other marquee score in the NBA was at that number. Um, and it tells you that Will’s gone back to like, let’s use Lowry to strength where the offense creates for him. Um, the amount of dribbles Lowry’s probably taken on points scored is few this year. Okay. Isolation defense. Lowry was 1.1 last year. He was one of the worst in the NBA. I think he ranked 171st out of 190. So far this year, he’s at 0.97. So from 1.1 to 0.97. A much better, stronger defensive effort by Lowry. Flip, by the way, despite all I’ve talked about, who was 168th out of 190 last year, is at 1.0 this year in isolation defense. Last year was at 1.08. We’ll see if that both those hold is going to be the question, but that’s great to see. Um, so both those guys just making a lot bigger effort trying to get do a lot of work there. Um, Keonte, who is playing much better in isolation defense, it actually is showing the opposite um, statistically, which I actually just think what that means is that Keont is guarding better players than he’s ever guarded before in isolation. that probably we’ve protected him for years, not ever having him get guarded guarding an Anthony Edwards or someone like that. And Will’s like, “Okay, you’re out there. Let’s go. You’re starting. You’re playing better players. Let’s see what you can do.” And he’s got to do it. The other one that’s interesting right now is our pick and roll defense of numbers according to Second Spectrum are kind of all all over the map. Um, actually statistically our best, you’ll be surprised, our best pick and roll defender right now is Bryce Sensible, who’s also one of our worst isolation defenders. By the way, just so you have it, Ace Bailey’s defensive numbers are all awful. Um, not like I’m not mentioning because it doesn’t matter. But the exciting one is Kee. Kee has gone from 1.02 points allowed on pick and roll defense, which ranked him 113th out of 131. So, not good. is now 0.911 and this is without Walker. Now we’re we should not be good at pick and roll defense. Um so that’s pretty exciting. Um 0.91 for Keant’s pick and roll defense is86. It’s incredible. Um but that’s a great stretch. That’s a great step forward for Keant’s been 202 pick and rolls this It’s a good enough sample size and he’s really doing a remarkable job um there and that’s that’s pretty great. And we really don’t have Walker was 1.0 on screen as a screen defender. Nerkish is 1.06. We Philipowski is kind of 1.0 right now. Love’s 1.3. Like we do not have enough bigs for this. Um so that’s a great sign by Keith. All right, that is our 10ame review. Dense dense episode. Jazz Hawks, join us. Tune in. Throw me questions during the game. We’ll answer them on the air. I love interactivity. Let’s have some fun. Jazz and the Hawks tonight. Quinn Snyder and the crew are in the in the house. It’s all right now. It’s all tonight. Thanks for tuning in to Locked on Jazz. We now send you the first ever 247 national NBA channel. Locked on NBA. Make sure you check out game night. Locked on NBA every game, every night.

Utah Jazz shake up preseason expectations with their cohesive energy and marked defensive progress. Can Will Hardy’s system propel the team out of the NBA’s bottom tier and into postseason conversation?

David Locke dissects the first 10 games, spotlighting Keonte George’s leap as a foul-drawing guard, Walter Clayton’s shooting promise, and Lowry Markkanen’s transformation into a “seven-foot Klay Thompson.” The review covers defensive metrics—like the Jazz ranking #1 in rim denial and executing Hardy’s game plan—while calling out turnovers as a lingering concern. Insightful player development updates highlight Kyle Filipowski’s strides, Isaiah Collier’s disruptive tempo, and Bryce Sensabaugh’s work ethic. Remaining schedule intensity and SRS rankings set the stage for tough challenges ahead.

Is Utah’s draft pick positioning at risk as competitiveness rises? Get expert analysis on pivotal trends and what Jazz fans should watch for as the season unfolds.

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