The Jazz are blowing it. Straight messing themselves over.
Unless they aren’t. Unless sweet-wretched fate embraces and carries them, a cruel thing to count on.
Only in pro sports that have an annual player draft, even those with a connected lottery like the NBA’s, can that first claim be made when a team does what competitive integrity calls upon it to do: win, do everything it can to win. And that’s precisely what the Jazz, remarkably enough, are doing of late.
Is it sustainable? No.
But that conclusion is nowhere near as certain as it was just a few weeks ago, back when large chunks of lemon drops and lollipops were falling out of the sky, landing directly on the Jazz’s sad-and-sorry noggins, knocking them out — out of games, out of respectability, out of even mediocrity, out of any chance at making the postseason, anchoring them near the bottom of the Western Conference standings. Everything was right on schedule, going to plan, going south, going to crap. Glorious, glorious crap.
They had lost 11 of 12 games on the road. They had suffered defeat more than twice as many times as they had tasted victory. They were banged up and done in, done for. The nadir was the infamous night they lost to Dallas by 50 points, a game in which the Mavs toyed with the Jazz and embarrassed them, making them look not just inept, but heartless and hapless.
It was pretty much perfect.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George (3) guards Detroit Pistons guard Alec Burks (14), in NBA action between the Detroit Pistons and the Utah Jazz, at the Delta Center, on Wednesday, January 3, 2024.
A gaping hole was blown in the bottom of a boat that would sink the Jazz to depths oh-so rare for a proud franchise, one that normally would do all it could to stay afloat, to be competitive. The trouble with that approach is that it had never led the club to a championship. It had led the Jazz to being good, really, really good in a couple of long-ago seasons, and pretty good in most seasons, but never great.
Great was a reach too far.
It was talked about a lot, but never realized. If you’re reading this, you know all the details.
It didn’t matter if the Jazz had Malone and Stockton and Hornacek, Boozer and Williams and Kirilenko, Gobert and Mitchell and Conley. It didn’t matter if Jerry Sloan was coaching them or Quin Snyder. And it didn’t matter if they had the league’s best regular-season record. They were never able to hoist Larry O’Brien’s trophy, and rarely came close. They were born to be bridesmaids, destined for it.
So Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik decided on a different tack. Trade away the Jazz’s best players, pick up three fistfuls of draft picks and a few pieces that might be contributors some day, develop them, lose and lose and lose, adding value to their own draft picks, and bolstering the bottom line.
They were flawlessly positioned to make that work a month ago, with rumors bouncing around that they might be willing to trade away some of the more useful players on their roster. The last thing the Jazz wanted was to stall out in the NBA’s dreaded middle-to-lower tier, the woebegone place where teams go to die. Not horrible enough to draft stars of the future and not talented enough to make a legitimate run at authentic contention. In the NBA, it’s advantageous, unless really dumb decisions are made, to be at or near that subterranean level.
The Jazz were there. And then, they weren’t.
They did the worst thing possible. Yeah, you know, they started winning games. Certain players healed up, like Lauri Markkanen and Walker Kessler, certain players advanced their games, like Collin Sexton and Kris Dunn, and Will Hardy made smart tactical adjustments that on many occasions throttled the Jazz forward … even on the road.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah guard Jordan Clarkson (00) reacts after hitting a 3-point shot giving the Jazz a 7 point lead in overtime, in NBA action between the Detroit Pistons and the Utah Jazz, at the Delta Center, on Wednesday, January 3, 2024.
What in tarnation?
The Jazz have won 12 of their last 16 games. The team seemed lucky at times in one way or another. But anyone who claims they saw the Jazz going 2-1 on their most recent road swing through Boston, Philly and Milwaukee is lying. Sure, Damian Lillard was out, Joel Embiid was out, as fortune continued to smile on the Jazz. But the improvement is obvious to those with eyes to see. Especially In a dominant win over the reigning champion Denver Nuggets on Wednesday. Off in the not-too-distant future, they’ll run into the Lakers, the Pacers, the Warriors, and the Thunder. Some of those opponents have struggled recently, but they are worthy tests.
If the Jazz don’t watch themselves, they’re going to be too good for their own good. Good, good, good. Always good or semi-good, or kind of good. Good, as soothing as it is in the short run, is the enemy of great over the long.
The Jazz know that as well as any other team. Or they should. If good is good enough … well, then, good. Great will require a different, more difficult path. Unless luck has some staying power around here. And that is usually accompanied by exceptional front-office acumen. If the Jazz have an ample supply of either or both, which they’ve lacked for a long, long time, blowing it won’t matter or won’t be in the picture. Then, everything’s going to be all right.
