The Music Never Stops

The Utah Jazz have done what big-market teams are struggling to do: build a team on the fly

It’s really, really hard to build a successful NBA team.

We all like to sit back and laugh at the David Kahns and Billy Kings of the world, but we also seem to conveniently forget that widely-respected basketball savants like Michael Jordan, Steve Kerr, and Doc Rivers fumbled when given similar tasks.

It’s especially tough for small market teams. Sure, we’re in a bit of a golden era of bumblefuck basketball, thanks in part to some terrible management in top-tier cities like New York and Chicago, but the fact remains that historically successful and popular teams will always have an easier path to success. More people = more money = more flexibility and room for error.

Right about now, you probably expect me to go on about how amazing the Spurs have historically been (recent drama aside). Maybe there’ll even be a quick shout out to Cleveland for their recent accomplishments. Truth is, those franchises deserve recognition. And they get it. Mostly because both teams actually got to hold up that championship trophy.

See, a ring will always buy you national respect, and it’ll permanently notch you up a rung on the ladder of NBA franchises. Problem is, even the most stacked teams require ungodly amounts of luck to ever reach that coveted zenith. Do the Warriors still win all those championships without opposing injuries paving their path? Maybe, but we’ll never know for sure. LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Chris Paul, Kawhi Leonard… there have been quite a few difference makers that didn’t get the chance to make a difference.

If you have a below average market, or just aren’t considered a “basketball city”, and you haven’t won a ring recently, it doesn’t really matter how many games you win. Dallas gets mountains of respect, and deservingly so. Philly, New York, and LA will get headlines no matter how bad the on-court product is. Even Brooklyn feels the love sometimes. But the Utah Jazz, who have quietly just kept on winning and winning and winning, remain an NBA afterthought.

Yes, a championship still eludes them, and I think that’s significant. Much to the chagrin of the many Chris Paul stans we have on staff here, I feel that playoff success is an absolutely crucial cog in evaluating a player, or team’s, overall greatness, and it’s often a deciding factor in comparisons. You need that ring to get that A+.

Utah never got it, so they might not be getting that full ride to Harvard, but they have accrued a 4.0 report card that would make any parent proud. Well, Mr. Ball might want a word. But, seriously, the Jazz have built up quite the impressive resume.

Here, let’s look at some numbers.

Going back to the 1983–84 season, the San Antonio Spurs have finished at or above .500 29 times out of 35 total seasons. They made the playoffs a total of 31 times, including a season in which they went 31–51, somehow.

In that same stretch, the Los Angeles Lakers finished at or above .500 27 times and made the playoffs on 28 occasions. The Chicago Bulls did the record thing 23 times (lol) and avoided an early summer in 24 seasons.

The Utah Jazz, meanwhile, finished ≥ .500 29 times and made the playoffs in 26 seasons. Those are the second-best all-around numbers in all of basketball.

If the Spurs are the most consistently successful franchise in basketball, then you probably have to call the Jazz the most consistently successful team in the league. Yeah, only a handful of Finals games have ever been played on the banks of the Great Salt Lake, and the team has had more than their fair share of early exits, but that kind of prolonged success is still completely absurd.

And the Jazz found that success doing things their way.

As any businessman will happily tell you, sometimes you gotta make your own luck. Teams generally do just that by throwing money around like cocaine at a Miami strip club. Organizations like the Lakers, Bulls, and Spurs generally grow their own core, but they’ve also always been more than capable of paying plenty of support pieces to come in and take the team over the edge. Utah has never really been afforded that luxury.

Unfortunately, I was completely unable to find any usable historic NBA payroll data. Seriously, it’s crazy. I spent the better part of an afternoon combing through the dustiest corners of the basketball web. No luck. Even without the hard numbers, however, I think it’s pretty safe to guess that the Utah Jazz spent less money over the past 35ish years than any of the other teams listed.

So, how did Utah do it? They’ve never had the money or cultural appeal to bring free agents into town, and they were never really bad enough to get more than a couple high draft picks. How the hell did they stay so good for so long?

Well, you have to look at a couple of things. In my eyes, the franchise’s ridiculous stability has always been its greatest asset. The Jazz have never had any ownership drama, and in the long history of the team, they’ve only had eight head coaches. Cut it down to our 35 season window from earlier, and that number drops to only four. Four head coaches in 35+ years. Meanwhile, the Kings, in those same 35 years, have had 21 head coaches.

In sports, stability tends to breed success, but it has its limits. Any Bengals fan can tell you that. At some point, you have to go out and get some exceptional talent. And the Jazz have done that with astonishing consistency, and they’ve done it mostly by utilizing the biggest crapshoot in sports: the NBA Draft.

Kobe Bryant

The Bulls picked Pippen, Jordan, and Rose with top 5 picks. The Spurs did the same with Robinson and Duncan. The Lakers did it too with Worthy and Magic. All three organizations filled out their rosters with a varying mix of impressive draft steals, but most of their top talent either came from elite prospects or free agent signings.

The Jazz, though, are a different story. They drafted Karl Malone with the 13th pick in the 1985 draft. Stockton was selected with the 16th pick in the prior draft. Sure, Deron Williams was the 3rd pick, but AK47 went 24th and Millsap and Okur both came out of the second round. Wesley Matthews was an undrafted free agent. Even Gordon Hayward was the 9th pick. Their current roster, again on the cusp of contending, is built around a 13th pick and a 27th pick. Teams just don’t hit home runs with that kind of consistency, and the Jazz have done it for almost their entire existence.

So, in the time window we’ve been using here, only one top 3 guy ever became part of Utah’s core. Even the Spurs, draft savants that they are, can’t claim anything like that.

That’s not to say that the Jazz have always totally avoided the free agent and trade markets. Guys like Carlos Boozer, Jeff Hornacek, and now Ricky Rubio have all played massive roles on their respective teams, and the list doesn’t stop there. Utah is always careful to use what it does have wisely.

The Utah Jazz are up there with some of the best-run franchises in sports, and nobody seems to acknowledge it. This is an organization that had risen above its fair share of strife and truly had some incredible successes, especially when one considers the hand that they’ve been dealt. Sure, they might not have the long list of accolades that some other franchises show off, but they also don’t have an appealing market or any ability to draw coveted free agents. The Jazz deserve more respect than they’ve been given.

And they’re proving that right now.

Just last summer, the basketball world assumed that the Jazz were in for a lengthy rebuild. They had tried and failed with Hayward, and with him gone, they’d need a trip back to the drawing board. Favors and Gobert would never be able to play with one another, and the team simply didn’t have the flexibility to retool a roster that had lost its star.

Honestly, I agreed with that take. It was almost ironic, as the original version of this article had dropped just a month earlier.

Now, well, I plan on using that new silver lining of New Jersey residency: my money will be on the Jazz to make the Western Conference Finals.

That “lengthy rebuild” lasted about four months. Quin Snyder took the interesting pieces that the Utah front office gave him and molded them into something special. He stuffed a rookie into Gordon Hayward’s empty offensive shoes, told Gobert to go nuts on the other end, and had Rubio keep both of them in check. It was ugly at first, but once it clicked… Wow. It turned into the most surprising single-season performance I’ve ever seen out of a team. It was jaw-dropping. And, unlike the Dragic/IT Suns and the Dragic/Waiters Heat, it actually seems sustainable. And they don’t have a Dragic, which seems to be oddly important.

Rudy Gobert

Mitchell, Rubio, and Gobert are certainly the core of the future, but the peripheral pieces will be just as important to the team’s success this season. Grayson Allen has looked very promising in the preseason, and he makes for a fantastic theoretical fit next to Mitchell or Exum. Speaking of Exum, he and Crowder should continue to abuse opponents on defense, even if neither of their offensive games has really come along as much as Coach Snyder hoped.

And then there’s Joe Ingles. He’s everything that Brian Scalabrine was meme’d to be. His chemistry with Rubio and Mitchell is off the charts, and the three constantly cover each other’s weaknesses. Add in Derrick Favors and his improved jumper, and you have a team that can mismatch against anybody in the West, Golden State included.

They don’t have a guy like Westbrook, Harden, Durant, or Curry, which will probably put a hard cap on their championship odds this year, but Mitchell could very well enter that vaunted tier of stardom in the near future. That kid is special.

(Sidenote: Jazz fans, lets officially put the Simmons/Mitchell rivalry on the shelf. We can go back to brawling once we’re both in the finals. For now, they’re just too much fun to watch for this to be worthwhile. I already have to hate Kyrie. I can’t take doing something similar with Mitchell)

In a world without the Warriors, this Jazz squad would be a borderline contender this year. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world, so it’ll probably be another year or two of good luck and fortune before we really talk about Utah as a top-tier threat in the West. But the rapid success of this rebuild should not be forgotten. The Process has its place, but I’m glad that a team went out and reminded GMs that there are other ways to build a contender.

Nobody saw this coming, but we should have. This organization has done it before, time and time again. The music isn’t stopping anytime soon.