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Christmas Day is one of the biggest dates of the NBA season, and this year’s slate features five games. The final matchup of Christmas is a Western Conference battle between the Utah Jazz and the Dallas Mavericks. My favorite bet of the night is the spread on this game, with these two teams having drastically different seasons so far.
Utah Jazz vs. Dallas Mavericks:
The Utah Jazz continue to look like a dominant team with a +10.4 net rating, the second-best mark in the league. The Mavericks were a popular sleeper team to join the ranks of the contenders this season but underwhelmed so far, with a below-average net rating of -0.2 and a 15-16 record.
Utah leads the league in offensive rating by nearly 4.5 points over second-place Charlotte, and the Jazz boast a high-powered scoring attack led by Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell is putting up 25.1 points per game with a career-high 57.1% true shooting mark on the second-highest usage rate of his career.
Mitchell is the engine of Utah’s offense, but reigning Defensive Player of the Year is the catalyst for the Jazz on the defensive end, and the French center is having another dominant season protecting the rim. Gobert allowed the lowest defensive field goal percentage compared to expectation of his career at the rim according to Basketball Index.
Gobert also is on pace for career-highs in rebounds (15.1 per game) and field goal percentage (71.4%) while defending the second-most opposing field goal attempts per game.
The Jazz rank in the bottom-five of passes made per game according to NBA.com tracking data and average the second-most average dribbles per touch with a number of primary ballhandlers who do the majority of the work in Utah’s offense. The Jazz have managed to be extremely efficient despite the lack of ball movement, with a league-high 0.297 points per touch and 115.8 points per game. Utah’s offense leads the league in three-point frequency with the fifth-highest three-point percentage, and the Jazz also top the NBA in overall eFG% and eFG% at the rim.
According to PBPstats.com, no team put up a better net rating with all five starters healthy than the Jazz, which bodes well for the team’s chances to make a deep run this season. Utah scored 125.2 points per 100 possessions with both Conley and Mitchell on the court, outscoring opponents by 16.84 points per 100 possessions in those 460 minutes.
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Even though the Mavericks have played better by 8.2 points per 100 possessions with Luka Doncic off the court, no one would argue the Mavericks are a better team without the superstar guard. Without Doncic’s monstrous 41% usage rating, everyone on the team is forced to take on a larger burden. Dallas’s roster is filled with role players designed to compliment the heliocentric superstar, not replace him.
The issue is compounded by the fact that Dallas is also without Tim Hardaway Jr., Trey Burke, Willie Cauley-Stein and others. Dallas’s eFG% improves by 2.4% with Hardaway Jr. on the court, so the team may struggle to score against a strong Utah defense. Jalen Brunson is a good bench scorer that averages 15.5 points per game, third-most on the team, and 1.12 points per possession in isolation (90th percentile), but is miscast in a primary creator role as a starter.
Dallas’s biggest offseason acquisition, Reggie Bullock, ranks in the 6th percentile with 91% of his made shots coming off assists, while Maxi Kleber‘s 94% assisted rate ranks in the 0th percentile, barely registering on the scale at Cleaning the Glass.
I’d feel even more confident in Utah’s chances if Kristaps Porzingis is out. While I disagree with Anthony Edwards‘s claim that Porzingis is a better rim protector than Gobert, Porzingis is having a strong defensive season, holding opponents to shoot 1.8% worse at the rim with Porzingis on the court (69th percentile). That’s better than Rudy Gobert‘s on/off differential in opposing rim efficiency, but the rim deterrence is an underrated factor in Gobert’s dominance.
The most illustrative stat in showing Gobert’s defensive prowess is the fact that opponents are scared to challenge him at the rim, evidenced by Utah’s opponents shooting 6.5% less frequently at the rim with Gobert on the court. This isn’t due to Utah’s system either, since backup center Hassan Whiteside plays a similar, albeit less effective, role for Utah and the Jazz try to funnel opponents inside the arc where they trust Gobert to clean up the mess left by Utah’s questionable perimeter defense. Utah allowed the fourth-lowest opposing three-point frequency and the second-highest opposing mid-range frequency, while also allowing the third-lowest opposing three-point percentage.
The only weak spot in Utah’s defense is in transition, where the Jazz only rank 27th, but the Dallas’s offense ranks dead last in transition efficiency and 27th in transition frequency this season, according to Cleaning the Glass. The Jazz lead the league in offensive efficiency, overall in addition to the halfcourt and transition, while ranking top-five in halfcourt and transition efficiency on the defensive end.
Dallas is 21st in offensive efficiency with the lowest rim frequency of any NBA team, so I expect a blowout win for the Jazz and feel comfortable laying the -12.5 in the final Christmas game of the slate.
EDGE: Utah Jazz -12.5 (2 Units)
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