Utah Jazz | Pace and Space

The Utah Jazz Worst Season: 1980

October 17, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Utah Jazz, stretching back to their founding in New Orleans in 1974, have on occasion been bad. But as franchises go, since the team finally figured it out in 1984 and had their first winning season, Utah’s been incredibly successful. Indeed, the worst season the team’s put up in Salt Lake City still featured 24 wins. The worst season they posted in New Orleans was 23-59. And that was their expansion 1974-75 campaign. Let’s look at what “not really that bad” looks like. That 24-58 season in 1980 deserves a deep dive. The On-Court Record Utah started out awful. …

Analysis

The Utah Jazz’s Best Season: 1997

October 18, 2021 - by Fox Doucette - 1 Comment

The Utah Jazz enjoyed a 20-year run of success, making the playoffs every year from 1984 to 2003. For the second year of that run, they drafted John Stockton 16th overall. For the third, they drafted Karl Malone 13th. No team before or since has managed to grab Hall of Famers in the draft in consecutive years despite being locked in what is normally Mediocrity Hell; the Jazz went 45-37 in 1984 and 41-41 in 1985. 13 years later, the Jazz made consecutive NBA Finals to cap off the prime of their two long-standing superstars. And in 1997, Utah set …

Analysis

The Utah Jazz’s Net Rating Is On Crazy Pills Again

March 30, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

It is a maxim of this site that “great teams win big and lose close.” It is also a maxim in sports more generally that teams that handle their business against good teams in the regular season are the teams who are the actual favorites to win the title come playoff time. But sometimes, you get a stretch of games where one team so completely beats the ever-loving snot out of other teams everyone thinks are contenders that you start to think to yourself “wait, are we witnessing historical greatness here?” The Utah Jazz’s current six-game winning streak is shading …

Analysis

Donovan Mitchell’s 2-Point Problem

March 18, 2021March 18, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

It is unusual for a guard who shoots over 38 percent from 3-point range to end up with an eFG% barely over the .500 mark, since by virtue of guards both shooting lots of threes and a 38 percent mark being itself good for a .570 eFG% by itself, you have to be a special kind of atrocious on 2-point shots to drag your eFG% down 70 points with barely over half of your overall shooting. Donovan Mitchell, who shoots 38.4 percent on a robust 3PAR of .432 but has just a .501 eFG% thanks to shooting 44.4 percent on …

Analysis

The Utah Jazz’s Weird, Wonderful 12-4 Start

January 24, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

During the COVID-mandated shutdown of the NBA during the spring and early summer of 2020, the Utah Jazz were at the center of a firestorm of rumors and controversy involving NBA Patient Zero Rudy Gobert, his alleged beef with fellow COVID patient Donovan Mitchell, and the potential breakup of a Jazz team that had found itself in “good but not quite good enough” territory over the past couple of years, a team that seemed to suffer from the second-round-ceiling problem that inevitably leads to tough decisions being made when the team can’t become a true contender. Today, January 24, 2021, …

Is He Any Good

Adrian Dantley: Was He Any Good?

August 3, 2020 - by Fox Doucette

Adrian Dantley was traded by the Utah Jazz to the Detroit Pistons during the 1986 offseason for Kent Benson and Kelly Tripucka, and from there his career arc was one of going from regular Western Conference All-Star and one of the best small forwards in the league (at least by reputation) to a guy who never sniffed another All-Star Game and who would be traded in 1989 for Mark Aguirre just in time for Aguirre to integrate himself into two Detroit title teams. Now, on the surface, that looks like a precipitous decline, and in terms of counting stats, it …

Analysis

Take Note: The Utah Jazz So Far, By the Numbers

November 8, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

Heading into a Friday night tilt with the Milwaukee Bucks, the Utah Jazz stand 5-3, fifth in the top-heavy Western Conference, and fresh off a gut-check 106-104 win over the Philadelphia 76ers Wednesday night. The Jazz rearmed and loaded up this offseason, and so far so good for them, but let’s take a look at some of the fundamental stats and patterns of this team and see if coach Quin Snyder is getting the most he can get out of them or if Jazz fans should be hoping for a fundamental shift in style in order to take a playoff …

2020 Preview

Are the 2019-20 Utah Jazz Good?

October 5, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

The Utah Jazz are expected to do great things in the 2019-20 season, as Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell get a couple of serious teammate upgrades from Mike Conley replacing Ricky Rubio and Bojan Bogdanovic playing a role once occupied by Jae Crowder. The “surround a big man with shooters” offense, so popular in Milwaukee, finds another home here, and for Gobert, already one of the most lethal offensive presences efficiency-wise in the low-post, having outlets will only be a boon to his already-impressive scoring prowess. And then there’s the whole having one of the best rim protectors in the …

Analysis

NBA Best And Worst Contracts Part IV: Northwest Division

August 22, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

In previous installments of this series, we’ve looked at the relative value of the contracts in the Eastern Conference in terms of Win Shares per minute-weighted dollar of salary. Time for a trip out west, and we’ll run into the namesake of the Wiggins Factor stat when we get to Minnesota (spoiler alert: It’s a train wreck.) If having great value on contracts is a harbinger of making a deep playoff run, you might want to get to Vegas and get some money down on the Jazz. As a quick reminder, a rookie, veteran minimum, or midlevel exception contract should …

Highlights

Breakfast Special: A Few Extra Bucks of Gate

April 23, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

In a pair of Game 4s in which the road team could close out a first round series and further underscore the essential pointlessness of a league that has at most four or five contenders each year nonetheless making everyone play a best-of-seven series against mediocre teams, one team decided that they didn’t need to get any extra gate revenue from losing and dragging out the series. Indeed, the Milwaukee Bucks’ next home game will be the We’re Not Indiana Game forthcoming against the Boston Celtics, a game that ought to be much more difficult for the Celtics than playing …