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Tim BontempsESPN
When Utah Jazz met again for training camp in December, they had three months to think about how the previous season had ended: with Mike Conley’s 3-point potential to win the game somehow by turning against the Denver Nuggets .
During those three months, Jazz thought several times about that fading chance, about the 3-1 advantage they had lost in that series, about not being able to win the first round of the Western Conference playoffs for a second straight season. And they went back to the start of the campaign determined to make sure things were different this time around.
“I really feel like we came back this year for a purpose,” said Rudy Gobert, of central Utah. “I really feel like we have a weight on our shoulders and we need it if we want to do what we want this year.”
After his last victory on Tuesday night, a 122-108 decision over visiting Boston Celtics, Jazz is now one of the best in the NBA with 20-5 this season and has won 16 of his last 17 games.
And unlike the other teams that float around them at the top of the NBA ecosystem – Los Angeles Lakers, LA Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers – Utah doesn’t have a real superstar on its list. Instead, what brought Jazz to this point for a third of the season is a cast that is working in perfect harmony.
The result is a team that is playing as well as any other in the league and is overcoming their opponents every night.
“Whenever you see a team shaping up for players and coaches, it’s rewarding,” said Jazz coach Quin Snyder. “When you have a team that collectively tries to play in a certain way and is committed to that, I think that’s what we have.”
Part of Jazz’s commitment comes from the way last season ended. The entire 2019-20 campaign, frankly, was a challenge for Utah. The team hoped to give a boost last year after switching to Conley, but he had to struggle hard to adjust to playing for a team other than the Memphis Grizzlies in the first 12 years of his career. The Jazz then added Jordan Clarkson to increase his score on the bench during the season – only to lose starting striker Bojan Bogdanovic for the team’s time in the Florida bubble due to wrist surgery.
And all of this, of course, pales in comparison to Utah being the center of the league, closing last March for several months after Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, the team’s two stars, tested positive for COVID-19.
But instead of all of that – as well as Utah’s painful loss to Denver – causing Jazz to fragment, it sent them off-season determined to create something better.
“I think, you know, the biggest thing that happened was just our motivation during the off season,” said Mitchell. “Guys coming in. I look at Royce [O’Neale]. People don’t look at Royce because we don’t play on TV, but you look at Royce, and he came in the best shape of his career this year. The determination in that sense. You see the product on the floor, but I think the most important thing is what you see on the floor.
“He and I went to Miami and worked three or four weeks straight. The things I saw him do, I didn’t see him do in his four years. Not to mention that he doesn’t work hard, but he took it to another level.”
“I think that’s where we saw the difference. We saw work ethics take another leap,” explained Mitchell.
What helped Jazz the most was that, in a season when so many things are in the air for so many teams, Utah knows exactly what it is and what it wants to be.
After the initial growing pains last season, Conley – who is currently out with a tendon injury – played better in the blister and has shown himself to be excellent earlier this season. Bogdanovic has returned from his wrist surgery and is starting to recover. Joe Ingles is reaching high percentages throughout his career. And Clarkson is the fugitive leader at the moment, winning the league’s Sixth Man of the Year award. Meanwhile, the only prominent player Utah added during the off-season – the great man Derrick Favors – spent the vast majority of his first nine seasons in Utah before being traded to the New Orleans Pelicans in the last off-season, making him extremely familiar with what was. Jazz would like him to do it.
And, of course, the team has seen an excellent and continuous game from its stars. Gobert remains the best defensive player in the league, anchoring a Jazz unit that, despite having added more offensive players in recent years, still ranks third in the NBA. Mitchell, on the other hand, entered Tuesday with the best performance of his career at 41.6% in the 3-point range – and that was before 6 out of 13 in line 3, as part of his 36-point high.
Despite Mitchell’s shooting exploits, it was revealing after the game that the thing he, Snyder and Gobert talked about instead was Mitchell’s decision: as a point guard for the injured Conley, he made nine assists and only two turns in 36 minutes.
“Decision-making,” said Gobert, when asked where Mitchell’s biggest improvement was this season. “He is really able to understand the pace of the game and be able to find his teammates.
“I think he has improved every year, but this is really the year he is advanced – and when he does that, the team goes to another level.”
Jazz know what level they want to reach this season. It has been 13 years since Utah last reached the Western Conference finals, when Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer led them in 2008 and they lost to the Lakers. It’s been 23 years since Utah reached the NBA Finals, when John Stockton and Karl Malone lost to the Chicago Bulls for the second consecutive season.
Time will tell if Utah has the capacity to reach that level, although the numbers at least give them a chance to fight. Utah is the only team in the league in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency. The only others in the top 10 in both categories? The Lakers and Bucks. And while there are still doubts about whether Jazz will have a hard time slowing down teams that can push Gobert off the edge, the Utah blow added offensively – Jazz is leading the NBA by 17 points out of 3 goals per game – give them a balance that they had not previously.
And for those who aren’t sure how high the Utah roof is, Jazz will have plenty of opportunities in the coming weeks to present its case. Beginning with Tuesday’s victory over Boston, Jazz has a stretch of eight out of nine games against some of the league’s elite teams: Celtics, Bucks, Miami Heat (twice), Sixers, Lakers and Clippers (twice) ).
Ultimately, however, Jazz is not concerned with what will happen in the next two weeks. Instead, it’s about being ready for what’s to come – and making sure they don’t have the same sour taste at the end of this season as they left Orlando in September.
“I think the most important thing is to focus on what we do,” said Mitchell. “This is the first game of a great extension that lies ahead, and we just have to focus on the small details. We have teams [scheduled] that have high level players, deep playoff experience, and we just have to go out there and do what we do.
“It’s not like we’re saying this is a decisive stretch for us. … We are not playing to be ready in February … we are playing to be ready in [July]. That’s when we have to have our best product, and these are good tests for us. “