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Tim BontempsESPN
When the Utah Jazz reunited for a training camp in December, they had three months to think about how the previous season ended: with Mike Conley’s potential trio somehow against the Denver Nuggets.
During the three months, the Jazz kept thinking about the shot that went off, about the 3-1 lead they blew in the series, about the fact that for the second time they did not play the first round of the playoffs of could not catch up with the Western Conference. straight season. And they came back for the start of this campaign, determined to make sure things would turn out differently this time.
“I really feel like we came back with a goal this year,” Utah center Rudy Gobert said. “I really feel like we have a chip on our shoulder, and we need it if we are going to do what we want to do this year.”
After their latest win Tuesday night, a 122-108 decision over the visiting Boston Celtics, the Jazz are now an NBA top 20-5 this season and have won 16 of their last 17 games.
And unlike the other teams that float to the top of the NBA ecosystem – the Los Angeles Lakers, LA Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers – Utah does not have a true superstar on its rankings. Instead, the thing the Jazz have carried through a third of the season up to this point is an ensemble cast that works in perfect harmony.
The result is a team that plays as well as anyone else in the league and steams through its opponents on a nightly basis.
“Every time a team sees some kind of form for the players and coaches, it’s gratifying,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “If you have a team that tries to play together in a certain way and is committed to it, I think that’s what we have.”
Part of the commitment that Jazz has comes from the end of last season. The entire 2019-20 campaign was honestly a challenge for Utah. The team expected to move forward last year after trading for Conley, only for him to strongly adjust for the first twelve years of his career to play in a team other than the Memphis Grizzlies. Then the Jazz added Jordan Clarkson to increase their score on the bench, only to lose starting lineup Bojan Bogdanovic for the team’s time in the Florida bubble due to a wrist operation.
And all of that, of course, pales in comparison to the fact that Utah closed out in the middle of the league last March after Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, the team’s two stars, tested positive for COVID-19.
But rather than all that – as well as the heartbreaking loss of Utah to Denver – that tore the Jazz apart, they were determined in the off-season to create something better.
“I think, you know, the biggest thing that was in it was just our motivation over the off-season,” Mitchell said. ‘Guys come in. I’m watching Royce [O’Neale]. People do not watch Royce because we do not play on TV, but you watch 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 biggest thing is what you see from the floor.
“He and I went to Miami and worked for three or four weeks at a time. The things I saw I did not see him do in his four years. Not to say he did not work hard, but he did. to another level. ‘
“I think this is where we saw the difference. We saw the work ethic take another leap,” Mitchell explained.
What still helped the Jazz was that Utah knows exactly what it is and what he wants to be in a season where so many things are in the air for so many teams.
After his initial growth pains last season, Conley – who is currently struggling with a thigh muscle injury – played better in the bubble, and he was excellent to start this season. Bogdanovic is back from his wrist surgery and is starting to take shape. Joe Ingles shoots career-high percentages across the board. And Clarkson is currently the runaway leader to win the league’s sixth award for Man of the Year. Meanwhile, the one leading player that Utah added during the off-season – the big man Derrick Favors – spent the vast majority of his first nine seasons in Utah before being handed over to the New Orleans Pelicans last season, which made him extremely familiar with what it was. the Jazz want him to do it.
And of course, the team continued to see excellent play from its stars. Gobert remains the league’s leading defensive player and anchors a Jazz unit that, despite adding more attacking players in recent years, still ranks third in the NBA. Mitchell, on the other hand, reached a top 41.6% of his three points on Tuesday and that was before he played 6-for-13 from the 3-series as part of his 36-point high.
Despite Mitchell’s shooting incidents, it was clear after the game that the thing he, Snyder and Gobert talked about earlier was Mitchell’s decision: he was nine assistants and only twice in 36 minutes as a scorer for the injured Conley. .
“Decision making,” Gobert said when asked where Mitchell’s biggest improvement was this season. ‘He’s really capable of understanding the pace of the game and finding his teammates.
“I think he has improved every year, but this year is really the year it has progressed. If he does, the team is just going to another level.”
The Jazz know what level they want to reach this season. It’s been 13 years since Utah last reached the Western Conference Finals, when Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer led them there in 2008 and lost to the Lakers. It’s been 23 years since Utah last reached the NBA Finals, when John Stockton and Karl Malone lost to the Chicago Bulls for a second consecutive season.
Time will tell if Utah has the ability to reach that level, though 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 will still be questions about whether the Jazz will have trouble slowing down teams that could pull Gobert off the edge, Utah gives the extra push offensive – the Jazz lead the NBA in 17 three-pointers per game – give them balance which they had not had before.
And for those unsure of how high Utah’s ceiling will ultimately be, the Jazz will have plenty of opportunities to state their case over the next few weeks. Since Tuesday’s win over Boston, the Jazz have a streak of eight out of nine games against some of the league’s elite teams: the Celtics, Bucks, Miami Heat (twice), Sixers, Lakers and Clippers (twice).
In the end, though, the Jazz are not worried about the next two weeks. Instead, it’s about being ready for what lies ahead – and making sure they do not have the same bitter taste in their mouths at the end of this season as when they left Orlando in September.
“I think the biggest thing is to just focus on what we do,” Mitchell said. “This is the first game of a big piece we’re coming up with, and we just have to focus on the small details. We have teams [scheduled] which has high-level players, deep experience in the playoffs, and we just have to go there and do what we do.
‘It’s not like we’re saying it’s a make-or-break series for us … We’re not playing to be ready by February … we’re playing to [July]. This is when we need to have our best product, and these are good tests for us. ‘