Utah Jazz: For Joe Ingles, the pressure is on
By Adam Coffman
After losing a major piece to free agency in Gordon Hayward, the Utah Jazz will need forward Joe Ingles to take on a larger role.
The last few Utah Jazz offseasons had revolved around the inevitable free agency period of forward Gordon Hayward, which ended with the All-Star joining the Boston Celtics on July 4.
The Jazz front office did all it could to make the team an attractive option for a peaking player to compete with, stocking the lineup with experienced veterans last summer, trading for an excellent complementary piece in Ricky Rubio, or moving up in this year’s draft to get Donovan Mitchell.
Joe Ingles was the recipient of another one of these moves, as the Jazz handed him a four-year, $52 million extension on July 1 before any other team could sign him to an offer sheet.
Looking only at his basic stats doesn’t immediately peg Ingles as a highly-valued asset. He averaged just 7.1 points per game last season on 5.5 field goal attempts, which ranked eighth and seventh respectively on the Jazz.
However, the Aussie was and is an excellent fit for the Jazz’s schemes on both ends of the court, particularly when playing with Hayward in a complementary capacity.
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Last season, Hayward’s offensive rating went up by 8.6 points per 100 possessions with Ingles on the floor. In most cases, this was due to the better spacing allotted on his drives and pick and rolls.
Conversely, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Ingles also benefited from Hayward’s presence on the court. The former’s net rating skyrocketed from -1.7 to a +9.3 in the 1,167 minutes the two shared the court.
Ingles is a decent secondary ball-handler, but he has never demonstrated himself as being able to take on a larger role in terms of creation or scoring in general.
Clearly, his value to the Jazz is diminished without Hayward or another star on the roster, so much so that Utah may not have offered him his extension had they known Hayward’s decision ahead of time.
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Ingles will be 30 before the start of next season, and although his skill-set should allow him to age well, his timeline doesn’t necessarily sync up with the Jazz’s new core of Rudy Gobert, Mitchell and others.
Of course, there’s no other option for the Jazz than to make the best they can out of the situation, and that means trusting Ingles with a larger role. He’ll almost certainly be starting at the 3 in 2017-18, a position he played at 50 percent of the time last season.
Even though the Jazz offense spreads out the facilitating duties out among the players on the court (George Hill lead the team with only 4.2 assists per game last year), they’ll be losing a massive source of production in Hayward, who posted a 27.6 usage rate.
That mark ranks in the 90th percentile and above for small forwards league-wide. Hayward was efficient with his opportunities to boot, shooting 47 percent from the field and 40 percent from behind the arc.
The addition of Rubio should ease some of this burden. He thrives as a playmaker, whether in transition or other half-court situations.
It stands to reason that the Jazz will transition into a more standard 1-5 pick and roll attack with Rubio and Gobert, given that the duo are their most skilled players.
Still, Ingles, along with the rest of the Jazz, will be forced to handle, create and score in a more advanced capacity if the team is to have a hope of living up to last year’s standard, a daunting task already.
Above all else, he’ll need to maintain his three-point shooting, which peaked last season at just above 44 percent. He’s improved each season in this regard, although it’s very likely his attempts won’t be as wide open as they were before.
According to Synergy, Ingles ran a pick-and-roll on 23.9 percent of his possessions last season, although he ranked in the 41st percentile in doing so. With a primary playmaker like Rubio in place, expect him to increase his attempts coming off screens as well.
Pressure will come twofold on Joe Ingles this season. Not only will he need to keep up his performance in key areas, but he’ll have to do so in a larger capacity, all the while justifying his big payday.
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We’ll have to wait and see if he’s up to the task, but with other pieces being thrown into the fire as it were, next season will be a transitional one for the Jazz.