Estimated reading time: 5 to 6 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz nostalgia weekend was filled with glowing platitudes, tribute videos and fond memories.
Along with all the warm fuzzies, some troubling signs and some nagging questions emerged.
Namely: Are the Jazz on a better path now than before? And maybe they blew things up too soon?
Those are the thoughts running through your mind as former point guard Mike Conley hits one 3-pointer after another to propel the Minnesota Timberwolves to a 119-100 victory and thus keep them within reach of the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference in the playoffs.
And also when the head coach Will Hardy angrily berates his team’s efforts after the match with a speech insinuating that some of his players care more about accumulating statistics than winning.
Yes, it will make you revisit the previous version of the club and wonder if things were really that bad.
Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert and Bojan Bogdanovic each faced the Jazz and made their respective returns to the Delta Center at different times this past season. But neither former coach Quin Snyder nor Conley joined their new teams until February 2023, meaning Jazz fans didn’t get to see them again until Utah’s back-to-back games this Friday and Saturday.
Given the natural tendency on such occasions to reflect on their time in Utah, it is just as natural to compare what is with what was, not to mention what might have been.
Gobert did not play on Saturday due to a short-term injury, but he is part of the same Wolves team that was comfortably atop the West for most of this season before the forward’s injury All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns. Meanwhile, Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers sit in third place in the East, while Bogdanovic and his new team, the Knicks, sit in fourth place there.
While none of them may be favored to win a championship this season, the fact that they are all winning to the extent that they are is, at the very least, a firewall against accusations of ‘be more motivated by putting up highlight clips on Instagram than checking off checkmarks in the win column. .
That’s a pretty inflammatory condemnation of this current list.
To be honest, there were never high expectations internally for what this Jazz team could do this season. They got off to a mediocre start, and as soon as they appeared to be gaining ground in their climb to proficiency, the front office responded with some precision excisions at the trade deadline, which caused the team to plummet to new.
The 2023-24 Jazz are currently a team that will be judged on what they can do in the future.
Are there reasons to be optimistic?
Each of the team’s rookie trios – Taylor Hendricks, Keyonte George and Brice Sensabaugh – showed moments of promise and potential. They also have nights like Saturday, where they shot a combined 14-of-40 (35%) and 3-of-19 (15.8%) from deep, and recorded five assists against eight turnovers.
Yes, this team was missing Lauri Markkanen, John Collins and Jordan Clarkson. But it’s not like Utah is piling up wins, even with them in the rotation. And their presence was unlikely to prevent Hardy’s outburst of frustration at the team’s general disinterest in passing and defensive play at the levels he expects.
Is the core of this roster or its cap space this summer or its list of future draft picks – or some combination of all three – enough to convince you that the team is on a more viable path to championship contention than she wasn’t?
Or do you put on rose-colored glasses and wonder if Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik ended the previous incarnation of the team too soon?
Lest we let sentiment obscure facts, that The Jazz version had specific problems and raised real concerns about its future viability.
Yes, at their peak, they were a team with the best single-season record in the league, but was that peak also their ceiling?
Discontent with current leadership should not create a blur that softens the edges of real existing deficiencies. This was a team, after all, that was deconstructed following a listless first-round loss to the Mavericks, that had bad mojo permeating its core and, frankly, seemed to have run its course.
But was completely wiping out the list the right decision? Or was this perhaps a team that could have been saved and resurrected with a few piece swaps and a new voice leading the way?
Snyder famously noted in his resignation statement that he was stepping down because “I strongly believe they need a new voice to continue to evolve.”
Could Hardy – or anyone else – have benefited more from a core comprised of an elite scorer, a generational defender, a heady floor general and a sharpshooter? top elite?
Did they need to break up the entire band, to the point where only Clarkson, the flamboyant and charismatic lead guitarist, was left? Or could they have returned to the top of the charts by also keeping the singer and bassist, but perhaps swapping the drummer, keyboardist and manager?
This is an intriguing hypothesis and, unfortunately, one that is impossible to answer unless someone is willing to share the secret recipe for manipulating the space-time continuum.
But until the Jazz consistently show form that doesn’t elicit four-letter words from their coach after the game, such questions can’t help but be asked by a fan base that doesn’t has only modest recent glories to cling to.
