Can Jordan Clarkson win Sixth Man this season?

Jordan Clarkson had spent most of his career trying to find a team that could help unleash his full potential. The fit with each of his previous teams – the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers – showed glimpses of promise but eventually fizzled out, born out of an inability to find his proper role and simply because he was a square block trying to fit within a round peg.

When he was traded to the Utah Jazz during the middle of the 2019-2020 season, Clarkson found his groove. Head coach Quin Snyder – who formerly coached the University of Missouri Tigers, Clarkson’s collegiate team – immediately struck a chord with him. 

Snyder was able to place Clarkson in a role he could thrive in: as a sixth man off the bench, providing a scoring punch for the Jazz’s second unit.

But what was it about the Jazz’s culture and system that gave Clarkson what was arguably his best individual season so far?

“I would say just the freedom that I have and the position that I’m put in,” Clarkson told Rappler during an online session for Philippine media. 

“Coach (Snyder) does a good job of putting me in positions where I’m able to get to my strengths. The last thing is really just focusing on my shot distribution… I try to take a lot of the bad long twos and tough twos out of my game and make the game a lot easier by (taking) catch-and-shoot threes or taking a dribble and still shooting a three or just getting straight to the rim and finishing.”

Clarkson’s production and quality of play took a significant boost. While his scoring average of 15.6 points per game was more or less in tune with his career trends, his numbers in several categories increased, most notably in his overall field goal percentage. 

In 42 regular season games with the Jazz, he shot 46.2% from the field, the highest it has been in his 6 seasons in the NBA. 

Clarkson also took 6 attempts per game from three-point range with the Jazz – a career-high – and shot 36.6% on three-point shots, a noticeable improvement from his career rate of 34.2%. 

Add to that his career-high of 54.7% on two-point shots and a true-shooting percentage of 57.4% (also a career-high), he not only gained the confidence to be the Jazz’s primary attacker off the bench, but he also proved that he was more than capable of performing his role.

Clarkson’s impact on the Jazz’s bench scoring was immediately apparent. Before the December 23, 2019 trade that sent him to Utah, the Jazz’s bench scored 26.9 points per game, ranked 29th out of 30 teams. After the trade, that average shot up to 38.3 points per game, accompanied by an increase to 18th in bench scoring.

An 11.4-point increase in bench scoring is by no means an insignificant improvement – and Clarkson’s emergence as an efficient bench scorer is far from being a coincidence.

“Something that we really concentrated on when I got to Utah was my shot distribution, getting straight to the rim, making the easy mid-range two, or making the easy three,” said Clarkson.

“I feel like that was the biggest adjustment I’ve made since I’ve been here in Utah and it’s helped me a lot. That’s why you’ve seen my numbers and everything else really gone up and increased.”

Just how much did Clarkson improve his shot distribution?

According to the NBA’s tracking data, Clarkson’s diet of shots consisted of a significant amount of mid-range pull-up jumpers during the 2018-2019 season – 20%, to be exact, as opposed to 17.3% of his pull-ups coming from behind the arc.

In accordance with Clarkson’s change of scenery during the 2019-2020 season, he decreased the frequency of his mid-range pull-ups to 10.7% and increased the frequency of his three-point pull-ups to 19.7%, per tracking data.

In a similar vein, Clarkson’s frequency of catch-and-shoot threes increased from 20.4% in 2018-2019 to 27.5% in 2019-20.

In this modern game of pace-and-space dominated by the analytics principle of “three is greater than two,” Clarkson’s increased emphasis on taking the more efficient catch-and-shoot three and decreasing his penchant for taking mid-range twos paid dividends.

With his role as a reliable sixth man secure with the Jazz – as evidenced by the four-year, $52 million contract he signed to stay in Utah – Clarkson has a full season to further develop his game, with the possibility of him evolving into one of the league’s premier sixth men, a club that has Lou Williams, Montrezl Harrell, and Dennis Schröder as its members, to name a few.

According to Clarkson, it is a distinction that he hopes to achieve in the near future.

“One goal and achievement that I do want to have under my belt is to win a Sixth Man of the Year award,” Clarkson said. “I’m kind of out of the conversation a lot just because I’ve been traded to multiple places now… If we’re winning and I’m performing well, that could be in the spotlight for me. Definitely would love to have that one of these years so I’m definitely going to shoot for that.”

If advanced metrics are to be believed – the caveat being that these must be taken with a grain of salt and must be complemented by film – Clarkson is trending toward being a sixth man of great renown. His Box Plus/Minus of plus-1.1 is a career-best, a level that is equivalent with being a solid sixth man.

Should Clarkson maintain such a level – or surpass it, as he would most definitely want to do – he could join Williams, Harrell, and Schröder in that exclusive list of best off-the-bench options in the NBA. Not only would it serve to benefit his own standing and reputation, but it will also go a long way in helping the Jazz become a legitimate Western Conference contender. – Rappler.com