No Alpha? No problem. Jazz hope to find strength in their second unit

Quin Snyder almost never commits to a short answer. This isn’t to demean the Jazz coach in any way. He’s simply a deep thinker. He absorbs a question and analyzes it. His answers amount to verbal essays, and can take minutes, not seconds.

So it says something about the relevance of Utah’s second unit that Snyder didn’t hesitate to pass a one sentence retort on its overall role.

“Huge,” Snyder said. “The bench is going to be very important to us.”

The NBA is a league where the teams with alpha scorers are the teams that win. The Jazz currently don’t have that. What they do have is depth. Starting Wednesday night, when Utah opens its season against the Denver Nuggets at Vivint Smart Home Arena, that depth will have to come to the forefront, and do so for 82 games.

Playoff hopes for the Jazz might depend on it.

“We feel that our depth can be a strength for us this year,” Snyder said. “We’ve got a lot of guys who can fill different roles, and we have to find a way to use it all.”

Take a look within the Northwest Division, and the star power is real. Oklahoma City has Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony. Portland boasts Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. Denver has Paul Millsap and Nikola Jokic. Minnesota is now home to Jimmy Butler and Andrew Wiggins.

Rodney Hood — if he stays healthy and takes a massive leap — might approach 20 points per game. Rudy Gobert is perhaps the best center in the league and certainly one of the five best defenders. But nobody on the Jazz is going to average 25 points a game, and as of now, it’s unknown who will eat up late fourth-quarter possessions.

So the Jazz are going to have to score, defend, rebound, block shots and win as a group. On paper, Utah has one of the better second units in the NBA, even with Dante Exum out with a separated shoulder. Those minutes — usually at the beginning of second and fourth quarters — will be crucial for the Jazz.

“I think our depth is really good, it’s certainly the best that it’s been in the past few years since I’ve been here,” Utah’s starting small forward Joe Ingles said. “We have the potential to play a lot of guys. We’ve been getting up and down the court this season, we can sub and get guys in and out. Our goal is to play at a high level for most of the game. So our bench is going to be super important to us. Everyone is going to have to be focused because it’s a long season.”

The Jazz have up to 12 guys who have been every game rotation players at some point in their careers, so there are different options.

With Exum unavailable, rookie Donovan Mitchell along with Alec Burks and Raul Neto will be the first guards off the bench. Thabo Sefolosha, Jonas Jerebko, Epke Udoh and Joe Johnson are the reserve forwards. Derrick Favors — who starts at power forward — often rotates to center when Rudy Gobert takes a rest.

Those names feature different skill sets. Johnson will often find himself on the floor in closing lineups, and remains a pure shot-maker late in his career. Sefolosha and Udoh are defenders. Jerebko serves as a stretch power forward. Mitchell and Burks are athletic scorers, and Neto is the natural point guard of the group.

“Our depth is going to be important,” Favors said. “The second group, we are going to have to keep the energy up, or pick the energy up, depending on how the game is going.”

For Favors, if the preseason is an indication, the second unit is where he will find many of his touches. Playing together with Gobert is proving to be a balancing act, so to balance the minutes between the two, Snyder often staggers Favors with the bench.

“I hope to be featured there,” he said.

What the Jazz have accomplished is putting together a roster that’s relatively injury-proof. With Exum hurt, Neto has seen plenty of rotation minutes in the previous two years. If one of the starters other than Gobert goes down, there’s an able replacement on the roster.

These are ways to combat not having a specific star offensively. Snyder and the Jazz hope players such as Mitchell and Hood develop over the course of the season. And the downside is there will probably be a good player or two left out of the rotation.

But Utah wants to be a team that can win with numbers. And this year, those numbers will likely have to be the key to a winning season.