“This team likes playing with and for each other. They play with a kind of happiness. It’s a connected group. They rely on one another. They have to.”
— Quin Snyder
It seems like such a nice, cute, quaint notion, the sort you would see demonstrated on a grainy, black-and-white highlight reel from the 1940’s or ’50s, as part of a tutorial — narrated by, say, Fred MacMurray or some other faded star — on the importance of unselfishness, cooperation and teamwork in basketball.
In that dusty presentation, as they pivoted and passed, the players would be wearing floppy socks and Chuck Taylors or PF Flyers, or some other heavy-laced canvas kicks of a bygone era.
And if you looked real close, you would see something that resembled … what’s this, the 2017-18 Utah Jazz?
Maybe not in athleticism, but certainly in attitude.
Snyder’s Jazz, the ones leading the OKC Thunder, 2-1, in their first-round playoff series, have gone old school, putting team back into Red Auerbach’s glorious game.
OK, so that’s a lie. Teamwork has never left the NBA. It’s always been there, all through the generational handoffs from Mikan to Russell to West to Abdul-Jabbar to Magic and Bird and Jordan and Olajuwon, right up to LeBron and KD and Steph.
But what’s going on now with the Jazz has diminished the idea that the only way to build success in the league is to acquire two or three established stars and simply roll the ball out on the floor.
No. What Snyder has fashioned blows that out of the water.
Great players are needed, no doubt.
But how about taking a really tall defensive center who is limited offensively, pairing him up with a gifted rookie, adding in a dude from Australia who was cut by the Clippers a couple of years ago, chucking in a castoff point guard who nobody believed could shoot, and utilizing an old-style power forward who only occasionally wanders out to shoot the corner-3? And utilizing a bench with a rookie nobody drafted, a veteran who looks more like a linebacker than a baller, and a kid who has spent more time in rehab than on the court?
And, most importantly, encouraging that group to believe in one another, to trust one another, to share the ball with one another, to win together, and to love one another like brothers, to find, as a couple of them have recently said, joy in playing together?
Does that sound like a bunch who would have the edge on Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony in a playoff series, at times looking absolutely dominant?
No, no it does not.
But it is.
The Jazz are moving their collective game forward by going backward, by embracing basketball not just in a way it should be played, but the way they have to play it to win. They may not win a world championship, but they’re having a great time making the most of what they’ve got.
“We say the strength of our team is the team,” Snyder said. “They believe that. That’s how we want to play. We have to create for each other. We’ve got to defend together, help each other. Those are things we have to do. That’s become our identity.”
He added: “Our players want the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts.”
It’s bigger than just that, though. These guys actually like to play together. They like each other. They hang out together. They eat together. They root for one another. They laugh at each other. They’re not all best friends, but they have befriended each other — in a brutally competitive environment that can eat away at anyone’s enjoyment and enthusiasm.
Part of that is preserved by keeping perspective.
Donovan Mitchell stressed that he, indeed, plays with jubilation, and there’s good reason for it: “The joy is easy to maintain. I’m playing in the NBA. I’m living my dream. … I don’t take any situation for granted. I love every part of it. … Especially being around teammates that are great to be around. … The vibe is always happy.”
Said Derrick Favors: “We have a group of guys who stay together, who work hard together. We move the ball, we share the ball a lot. Everybody gets an opportunity offensively to take a shot, to be aggressive. We support each other. We’ve got great chemistry. We’ve got a great team.”
The Jazz are nobody’s troop of Boy Scouts, but all of the above rolls together to make them better on the floor.
Observing from the other bench in their series with the Jazz, Thunder coach Billy Donovan said he admires the style and cohesiveness of his opponents:
“They’re a very good team on both ends. From an offensive standpoint, they have the ability to play big and somewhat small. They’re a very good passing team. They’re an unselfish team, willing to move the ball, to make the extra pass. It’s a high IQ team with a good understanding of how to play.”
Joe Ingles concurred: “We’ve got such an unselfish team. It’s never been about one person, who’s scoring and who’s not, who’s shooting well and who’s not.”
He and Mitchell, independent of each other, added one other thing about playing on this particular iteration of the Jazz, something that sounded as though it came out of a different time, a different age, a lost age, an almost forgotten one.
“It’s fun,” they said.
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.
