Photo: Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle

Ninth in a series

The initial rush of NBA deal-making is complete. Like Christmas shopping that comes after Black Friday, more deals will be made. But NBA teams have stocked up. More power has shifted to the west. MVP-caliber players have moved in ways expected and stunning. The Warriors remain the team to beat, with potential to be even better than they have been.

With that, and allowing that more significant moves could still come, a look at the way the NBA Western Conference shapes up.

Today: No. 3 Utah Jazz

Incoming: Grayson Allen

Outgoing: Jonas Jerebko

The Jazz spent their off-season holding on to their own free agents and watching their draft pick, Grayson Allen, play summer league ball. It was not, however, an uneventful summer. More than that, standing pat should make the Jazz better.

They were already better than last season's finish might indicate. The fifth seed in the West, the Jazz were one game out of third in a season Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert missed 26 games.

The season as a whole was something of a transition, with the Jazz success – winning 48 games before surging past the Thunder in the first round – making it easy to overlook that last season was a step toward this season.

With that in mind, the Jazz made sure to keep Derrick Favors, Dante Exum and Raul Neto, believing improvement will come from within.

Better health should provide much of that. Besides the chunk of time Gobert missed, Exum played just 14 games before exceling in the playoffs. Ricky Rubio had the top-scoring, best-shooting season of his career, but was badly missed when he could not come back to play in the conference semifinals against the Rockets.

The addition of Jae Crowder at the trade deadline and surprising play of Royce O'Neal helped with the rebuild of the Jazz bench.

As long as Gobert is healthy, the Jazz defense will be among the NBA's best, likely the best. Even with Gobert out through much of the early season, the Jazz were second by one tenth of a point per 100 possessions to the Celtics last season.

The Jazz, however, moved toward the upper echelon of the league and could keep moving up based on the stellar play of Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell did not move into the starting lineup full-time until after 12 games. The Jazz were 5-7 before the switch, but took off the more Mitchell asserted himself.

Mitchell averaged 20.4 points as a rookie and bumped that up to 24.4 in the post-season, with no reason to think he won't pick up where he left off. His rapid ascension combined with Joe Ingles' shooting as the replacement for Gordon Hayward at small forward made the Jazz a Western Conference force well ahead of schedule.

It also gave them reason to stand pat in the off-season, moving up without changing.

Photo: Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle

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The teams on the outside

No. 10 Minnesota

No. 9 Portland

No. 8 San Antonio

No. 7 Denver

No. 6 New Orleans

No. 5 LA Lakers

No. 4 Oklahoma City