Rarely do storylines come as cut and dried as this one. The only trouble was, outside of Utah Jazz fans and NBA dorks, nobody really knew Salt Lake City even had a story to tell last year.

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The Jazz stood at 17-33 with just a few games left before the All-Star break, working with the league’s fourth-worst defense. Neither mark was much of a surprise. The team started a defensive zero in Enes Kanter at center and it had recently decided to start an at-times clueless 19-year-old rookie in Dante Exum at point guard after Trey Burke’s poor showing. It was a young roster and the depth was lacking.

The team won two of three before the break to encourage a bit of momentum, and at the trade deadline the team moved Kanter on to Oklahoma City cap fodder and a future first-round draft pick. The draft pick (likely showing up in Utah in 2017, top 14 protected from there until 2020) was a nice haul for a player who was set to be a restricted free agent during the summer, and Kanter had his detractors, but the disappointment was real: Utah dealt the byproduct of a lost 2010-11 season for a draft pick they won’t see for years, as the unending rebuilding project droned on.

Then the Jazz went out and decided to make every sportswriter’s job easy by winning a whole bunch of games.

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With second-year project (eight months ago, at least) center Rudy Gobert shifted into the starting lineup alongside incumbent bruiser Derrick Favors, the Jazz went on to finish the season on a 21-11 roll. The squad turned into an astonishingly good defensive outfit, leading the NBA on that end over the season’s final two months, jumping a ridiculous 13 spots in the defensive ranking to finish 14th overall on that end.

Not to pick on the Lakers, and this is an imperfect comparison, but that’s akin to Los Angeles (the fourth-worst team in the NBA at the All-Star break) roaring back to grab the last playoff spot in the West in eight weeks. Inconceivable for everyone, Byron Scott excluded.

Finishing with 38 wins in the West, with that roster (which fielded 22 different players, as coach Quin Snyder searched for end-of-the-bench answers), was quite the accomplishment full stop. To do so after dropping 33 of your first 50 games, though, was a marvel. The go-to stereotype would have the Jazz plucking wins away from teams that either underestimated them or had given up on the season, but that simply was not the case in Utah on most nights.

No, this is a team with cornerstones. In Gobert, Favors, Exum (who was an uncanny defender for someone his age, even if his offense was lacking) and future All-Star Gordon Hayward, the Jazz have a nucleus.

And they have a hundred different ways to stop you.

2014-15 season in 140 characters or less:

Hey. We’re still playing. Winning a lot, too. Something like channel No. 759 on Direct TV. Do tune in.

Did the summer help at all?

No, sadly. Not at all.

Each of Utah’s young talents will benefit from a summer of rest and a move closer to their prime, but Exum tore his left ACL while playing in his home country of Australia in an exhibition match against a team from Slovenia in August. The non-contact tear reminded many of Derrick Rose’s 2012 ACL tear, and it will likely knock the 20-year-old out for the entire season.

(Those who may have any reservations about Exum playing in such a game should can it. Players work in international or stateside games all the summer, and you rarely see any major or even lingering injuries result – it’s basically down to Exum and Paul George. Furthermore, the non-contact nature of the tear meant he could have done it while practicing his jump-stop in an empty gym. On top of that, Exum needed and needs all the reps he can get, as the Jazz wait on him to develop.)

Exum's @AussieBoomers status up in the air after knee injury overnight in Slovenia: http://t.co/EUmxn0CKjk pic.twitter.com/AOEtRKsySr — NBA Australia (@NBA_AU) August 4, 2015

That loss was magnified by Utah’s inability (be it there fault or the market’s) to upgrade in the backcourt over the offseason.

Utah made its run last year with Joe Ingles starting at ostensible shooting guard, with Hayward doing much of the ball handling at point forward and Exum learning the ropes around the offensive fringes. The injured Alec Burks will return from a shoulder injury to play off-guard, and there’s a good chance his dash-and-finish game could fit right in with the reborn Jazz, and 23-year-old Brazilian point guard Raul Neto intrigues, but this is still a thin team.