Plenty to look forward to as Jazz season approaches the finish line

Plenty to look forward to as Jazz season approaches the finish line

(Scott G Winterton/Deseret News)


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SALT LAKE CITY — On the surface, it appears the Utah Jazz are coming to the close of another somewhat disappointing season.

The team will miss the playoffs for the third consecutive year, and it will be their second in a row finishing with fewer wins than losses. Utah also sent no representatives to the All-Star game, extending a streak that dates back to 2010-11, and will again take part in the NBA’s draft lottery after missing out on the playoffs.

Dig just a little deeper, though, and the full scope of the season is anything but a letdown. For one, even the 36 wins Utah has managed with three games to go are a huge accomplishment given preseason expectations. Most Las Vegas sportsbooks had the Jazz’s over/under for total wins between 24 and 26, and many projected that they’d finish dead last in the Western Conference. They’ve well exceeded these estimates already, and have done so without any sort of major in-season trade to boost their talent.

Even more encouraging is the level of play they’ve displayed over the latter half of the season. It’s common understanding among NBA thinkers that a team’s performance during the back end of a previous year can often signal better things to come in the upcoming one, and Jazz fans have to be very excited for the future through this lens. Consider a few simple numbers that gauge Utah’s showing over the last few months:

  • The Jazz are 25-22 since Jan. 1. They’re 17-9 since the All-Star break in mid-February, which would tie them for fourth in the West and sixth in the league during that span.
  • The 17 wins during this period since the break have come by an average margin of 11.5 points.
  • The Jazz have outscored their opponents overall, including in losses, by an average of 5.7 points per game in this time.
  • Utah has allowed the fewest points scored per game by opponents over the course of the entire season (94.5). This has dropped all the way to 87.2 points since the break, over six points stingier than any other team in the NBA.


Most Las Vegas sportsbooks had the Jazz’s over/under for total wins between 24 and 26, and many projected that they’d finish dead last in the Western Conference. They’ve well exceeded these estimates already, and have done so without any sort of major in-season trade to boost their talent.

  1. Led by big men Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors, Utah’s rebounding percentage — quite simply, the percentage of all available rebounds a team collects on either end of the floor — leads the league on the year, at 52.9 percent. Once again, they’ve been even better since the All-Star break, at 54.1 percent.
  2. Using per-possession stats, often favored by analysts to account for varying pace of play between teams (Utah is among the slowest), the Jazz have been the league’s fifth-best team overall since the break. Better yet, they’ve posted the top overall defense in the league by this same measure during this time, a figure that would approach historic levels of stinginess over the course of any full season. Before we crown them 2016 title winners, however, there are a couple of bits of relevant context. It’s true that Utah has played one of the league’s easiest schedules over the latter half of the season, after encountering one of the very toughest over the first half of the year.

The Jazz also benefitted greatly from being “new kids on the block,” so to speak — with so much youth on the roster (Utah is the NBA’s youngest team by average) and relatively unknown players emerging as vital pieces, opponents have yet to properly scout and adjust for some of their tendencies. This should change to some degree next season, with the Jazz firmly on everyone’s radar at this point.

But there are plenty of reasons for optimism. Their wins certainly haven’t only come against the dregs of the league in recent weeks and months — they’ve beaten Houston, Memphis, Milwaukee, San Antonio and Portland since the beginning of February, each of whom will make the playoffs and a couple of whom have legitimate title aspirations.

So mark opening day on your fall 2015 calendar as soon as the schedule comes out. Utah has an excellent coach for the future in Quin Snyder, an exciting young core, and even some extra cash to potentially spend on further upgrades this upcoming summer. Even with the season winding down, the time couldn’t be better to get in on the ground floor before this group takes off.

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Ben Dowsett

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