What will Bojan Bogdanovic's wrist surgery mean for the Utah Jazz if the 2019-20 NBA season resumes?
Bogdanovic will undergo surgery to repair an injury that caused him to play in pain, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported Monday. And while it's uncertain when the Jazz or anyone else might play basketball games, Bogdanovic isn't expected back until a subsequent 2020-21 campaign.
During his first season in Utah, Bogdanovic had emerged as a key starter for a Jazz team battling to secure home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs before the NBA's shutdown. So how might the Jazz replace him if and when they play again, and where will the injury leave them in the West race?
Bogdanovic's shooting key for Utah
Adding Bogdanovic and veteran guard Mike Conley last summer gave the Jazz six starting-caliber players and just five spots for them, leaving coach Quin Snyder juggling throughout the season. No matter who else came and went around them, Bogdanovic was a fixture in the starting five alongside All-Stars Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell. He started all 63 games he played and was part of the most Utah lineups that saw at least 70 minutes of action, per NBA Advanced Stats (six of the seven).
In large part, Bogdanovic was indispensable because of his shooting. Long a high-percentage 3-point marksman (he has shot better than 40% on 3s each of the past three seasons), Bogdanovic ramped up his volume in Snyder's 3-centric offense, attempting a career-high 10.7 triples per 100 possessions. His 4.4 makes per 100 possessions ranked 22nd among qualifying NBA players according to Basketball-Reference.com, just behind namesake Bogdan Bogdanovic of the Sacramento Kings.
At the same time, Bogdanovic's defensive versatility was also important to the Jazz's undersized starting fives. With Royce O'Neale typically taking on the opponent's best wing scorer, Bogdanovic was frequently asked to defend power forwards after previously defending wings throughout his career. Second Spectrum tracking shows that Bogdanovic's primary matchup for almost half of his time on the court was a player who saw action primarily at power forward or center.
As a result, replacing Bogdanovic might not be as simple as starting both O'Neale and Joe Ingles at forward with Conley, Mitchell and Gobert -- though those are clearly now Utah's five best healthy players. Remarkably, that fivesome logged just 14 minutes through the suspension of the season.
More time for the Minivan?
The most logical like-for-like swap the Jazz could make with Bogdanovic is backup forward Georges Niang -- the self-proclaimed "Minivan" in contrast to faster teammates -- who played a similar role off the bench. Remember that group of 21 players who made 3s more frequently on a per-possession basis than Bogdanovic? Niang was one of them, knocking down 42% of his attempts after hitting 41% in 2018-19 -- a total sample of nearly 300 attempts.
Defensively, Niang is the Utah regular best equipped to cover most power forwards with a similar frame (a listed 6-foot-7, 230 pounds) to Bogdanovic (6-8, 216). Niang was also the most frequent replacement in the Jazz's lineup for Bogdanovic, playing more than 60% of the minutes Bogdanovic spent on the bench this season.
At the same time, there's a reason Niang was averaging 13.3 minutes per game off the bench and Bogdanovic was playing nearly 20 more. Bogdanovic is a more versatile scorer whose career-high usage rate (25.6% of Utah's plays) was the team's second-highest mark behind Mitchell's. Niang's smaller role (17.1% usage) has allowed him to remain efficient by focusing primarily on catch-and-shoot opportunities.
According to Second Spectrum, Niang was even more effective in that role with an effective field goal percentage of 65% to Bogdanovic's 63%. However, catch-and-shoot attempts represented 65% of Niang's shot attempts and just 39% of Bogdanovic's. As a result, the Jazz will have to find more shot creation elsewhere when Niang replaces Bogdanovic. And that may put pressure on Conley.
Can Conley step up as a creator?
While Utah surely had high hopes for Bogdanovic when handing him a reported four-year, $73 million contract last summer, he wasn't projected as the Jazz's best player outside their young All-Star duo. Instead, that role was supposed to belong to Conley, who had averaged a career-high 21.1 PPG last season with the Memphis Grizzlies before being dealt to Utah.
Starting with a 1-of-16 shooting performance in the Jazz's season opener, Conley struggled early on, and the team's best stretch of the season came when he was sidelined by a hamstring injury. Although the schedules weren't entirely equivalent, Utah went 21-8 when Conley was either out or coming off the bench and just 20-15 in the 35 games he started. Yet Snyder still returned Conley to the starting lineup at the start of February with an eye toward better integrating him before the playoffs.
Conley was playing his best basketball just before the NBA hiatus, making 42% of his 3s and posting a .590 true shooting percentage in the nine games after the All-Star break as compared to 36% and .511 before the break. The Jazz will need Conley to pick up where he left off, and the benefit of having an indoor gym in his home to continue working out and shooting (as we saw when Conley easily won the NBA's HORSE competition last month) should help him if and when play returns.
While Snyder will have other options to replace Bogdanovic's shot creation, including more minutes for high-scoring backup guard Jordan Clarkson, Conley is surely the best one. The most competitive version of this year's Utah roster always included Conley getting back to the level we saw over the past decade in Memphis, and that's only truer now.
It remains to be seen whether the NBA will continue the regular season, forcing the Jazz to maintain a narrow one-game lead over both the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder for the fourth seed in the Western Conference. The longer Utah plays, the deeper Snyder may need to go into his bench to fill Bogdanovic's minutes. Just 12 Jazz players have seen more than 100 minutes of action this season, and Utah is now down two of them with Jeff Green waived in December and Bogdanovic sidelined.
Still, if Conley can replace Bogdanovic's shot creation and Niang replaces his shot making, the Jazz might be able to remain competitive in the West despite this injury.