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The Jazz seem to have a healthy fear of him eventually trying to push his way to New York and as a result have given him an unusual amount of power within the organization for a player with (checks notes) zero All-NBA appearances. That takes us to the biggest point of inflection on the roster: Mitchell. Ainge is 63, but sources tell The Athletic he’s not in Utah to do some quasi-consultant thing from the golf course he’s there to put this imprint on the organization and the roster and could make several changes to both this summer. The Jazz have a new owner (Ryan Smith) and a new CEO (Danny Ainge), along with significant involvement from minority owner Dwyane Wade. To some extent, that has already happened. The Jazz weren’t bad, per se, but they haven’t looked like a contender in quite some time.Īll of this sets the table for an offseason likely to contain considerable change in Utah.
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The Dallas series was not any kind of outlier relative to Utah’s play since New Year’s Day since that point, it’s ranked a more modest eighth in offense and 10th in true shooting. That seemed to manifest itself in the second half of this season the Jazz started 28-10 but limped along at a 21-23 clip after that. The midseason trade of the universally loved but injured Joe Ingles likely didn’t help. With every veiled comment about sharing the ball and needing to play defense, and every cryptic Instagram post from former players, it became increasingly apparent there’s some bad feng shui in the Utah locker room.
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Of perhaps equal significance, the esprit de corps that defined the earliest editions of this team morphed into something more complicated. Offensively, switching schemes often left Mitchell playing hero ball, particularly because the Jazz rarely sought to have Gobert post up smaller players. Dependent on a “sum-greater-than-parts” system that pinged the ball around the court for open 3-pointers and used Gobert’s defensive dominance to erase the athletic shortcomings of the perimeter talent, the math began working differently as the league evolved.Īs switching, small-ball-driven postseason lineups gained prominence, opponents found they could roast Utah’s other defenders by playing five perimeter players and keeping Gobert away from the rim, as last year’s Clippers and this year’s Mavs discovered. Somewhere in here, the Jazz evolved into a different version of themselves. And, of course, they just lost in six games to a Dallas team that was missing Luka Dončić for half the series - an inexcusable defeat for a team that fancied itself a title contender. They were also leading Game 6 by 22 points at halftime let us not mention what happened after that. They won the first two games against the Clippers a year ago and were still tied 2-2 when Kawhi Leonard was ruled out of the series. The Jazz were favored against Denver in 2020 and owned three of the first four games of the series only to suffer three straight narrow defeats. Recent postseasons, alas, have gone the opposite direction. The first few iterations of Quin Snyder’s Jazz teams overachieved in the playoffs, most notably when they ran the Thunder in circles in a 4-2 series win in 2018. Yet things have been increasingly weird in Utah ever since it blew a 3-1 lead against Denver in the 2020 bubble. Gobert and Mitchell are both still on the good side of 30. Yes, the Jazz just lost in the first round in disappointing fashion, but they won 49 games in an accredited basketball conference this season and had the league’s third-best scoring margin and its top-ranked offense. It’s been a heck of a run, even if it didn’t result in a conference finals trip, and it doesn’t necessarily have to end right now.
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Amazingly, they did all this immediately after their best player at the time, Gordon Hayward, bolted as an unrestricted free agent in 2017. They had the NBA’s best record in 2020-21, won two playoff series, had multiple All-Stars for three straight seasons and got three players into the 2021 game. We don’t know yet if this is the end, but it sure feels that way.įor half a decade, the Rudy Gobert– Donovan Mitchell version of the Utah Jazz has been among the league’s most successful teams.