Utah Jazz 2016-17 season review: Joe Johnson

Strengths

When he started his career, Johnson functioned mostly as a shooting guard, which led to him serving as a ball-dominant wing for his prime years with the Atlanta Hawks. However, the NBA has changed since then, and his 6’7″, 240-pound frame is now best used as a combo forward.

He’s not as quick as he used to be, but Johnson is still an elite-level knockdown shooter, nailing 41 percent of his triples last season. While other Jazz power forwards like Boris Diaw or Trey Lyles struggled with their shot, he remained consistent, particularly with the all-important corner three, where he hit 44 percent of his attempts.

In addition to his prolific outside shooting, Johnson also managed to create offense through his drives to the basket, mostly taking advantage of larger and slower defenders. This was especially useful in late-clock situations when the Jazz offense bogged down.

According to Synergy, Johnson scored 0.877 points per possession as the ball-handler in the pick-and-roll, which ranked in the 69th percentile league-wide. He also placed in the 75th percentile in terms of playing off of dribble handoffs.

As mentioned previously, Johnson’s foot speed doesn’t allow him to stay with creators on a full time basis, but he is quick enough to switch onto guards in a pick-and-roll setting where other bigs would fail.

With opponents’ only other option being to go at Rudy Gobert, this severely limits the impact that point guards can have against the Jazz.

Johnson is short for a traditional power forward, but makes up for it in post-up situations with his solid base and awareness. This is doubly important as it takes away one of the main schemes offenses will go to when playing against small ball.