Scouting one-pager: Utah Jazz (UTA)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,469 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
- corner three: A three-pointer from the corner, where the NBA line is roughly 3 ft closer than the arc - the geometry discount that makes it the cheapest three.
Keys
- They hunt corner threes: 28.7% of their threes come from the corners (league 25.9%). Run shooters off the corner line first.
- Svi Mykhailiuk is a genuine shot-maker: +5.9 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Cody Williams (1.15 xPPS on 509 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: J. Nurkić - L. Markkanen - S. Mykhailiuk - K. George - A. Bailey (-8.8/100 over 400 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| UTA | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.073 | 1.091 | -0.018 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.083 | 1.097 | -0.014 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | -1.0 | -0.5 | -0.4 |
| Rim share | 25.8% | 28.4% | -2.6 pp |
| Mid-range share | 9.9% | 10.0% | -0.1 pp |
| Three share | 40.2% | 41.5% | -1.3 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 28.7% | 25.9% | +2.8 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.8% | 1.8% | -0.0 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Ace Bailey | 892 | 1.039 | 1.094 | -5.4 | -4.2 | -3.0 |
| Keyonte George | 881 | 1.065 | 1.016 | +4.9 | +3.5 | -2.3 |
| Brice Sensabaugh | 857 | 1.109 | 1.069 | +4.0 | +2.7 | -2.2 |
| Lauri Markkanen | 805 | 1.097 | 1.115 | -1.8 | -1.5 | +2.7 |
| Kyle Filipowski | 657 | 1.096 | 1.113 | -1.7 | -1.4 | +0.9 |
| Isaiah Collier | 515 | 1.043 | 1.015 | +2.8 | +1.7 | -4.4 |
| Cody Williams | 509 | 0.990 | 1.149 | -15.9 | -11.1 | -2.8 |
| Svi Mykhailiuk | 362 | 1.227 | 1.100 | +12.7 | +5.9 | +1.0 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| J. Nurkić - L. Markkanen - S. Mykhailiuk - K. George - A. Bailey | 179 | 400 | -8.8 |
| B. Sensabaugh - C. Williams - I. Collier - K. Filipowski - A. Bailey | 52 | 119 | -14.3 |
| J. Nurkić - S. Mykhailiuk - K. George - C. Williams - A. Bailey | 49 | 111 | -34.2 |