The NBA is full of fantastic mini-barometers used to measure just how closely one person is following along or not. Unlike following a popular TV show, where “I’m not caught up yet” is a permissible excuse for abbreviating any discussion (i.e. every dinner/coffee/party conversation in my proximity that ventures near Breaking Bad), sports fans are expected to be caught up 100 percent of the time. So while someone that has watched four or five episodes of Weeds can still label themselves a fan of the show, that same person’s allegiance to the Indiana Pacers would come into tremendous doubt if they were caught burying the team’s “lost season” this month.
(Sidebar: I had the fate of Walter White ruined for me on Monday… twice. I’m heated.)
I say all of this because discussing the Utah Jazz is a game within the game for committed (seasoned and insane) basketball fans. Texting my hoops-obsessed friends “Dude, Gobert should start defending 1 on 5” or “We’re all sleeping on Gordon Hayward: the next elite wing” or “Quin Snyder: Great coach or Greatest coach?” is our own hyperbolic way of saying that Utah is playing well.
Let's give Rudy Gobert Defensive Player of the Year, Most Improved Player of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year for the precedent it'd set.
— Andy Bailey (@AndrewDBailey) March 17, 2015
This is how NBA Twitter communicates on a night-to-night basis — through all-caps proclamations, Vines and funky figures. It’s intoxicating. And as outlandish as it can all be, it’s all part of why the NBA is killing and league revenue is shooting up to a couple googolplex in 2016.
Let’s take a closer look at Utah. This team is 30-36 in an ultra-competitive Western Conference, all but mathematically eliminated from the postseason, and virtually stuck behind a conglomerate of proven organizations who routinely make the playoffs. In terms of winning championships, hope has been in short supply for Utah, a franchise that is known for coming up short on the game’s biggest stage. The Jazz historically remind me of my Buffalo Bills, a franchise whose distance from contention has become so enormous that it actually begins to define it.
Except here’s the cool thing about the NBA: During the 82-game pilgrimage from opening night to the playoffs, fans mostly drop the forced career narratives conversations, and just have fun watching great players play basketball. It would be too exhausting to consider, night after night, what so and so’s performance — on a Monday, against Charlotte — means for their “legacy.” That system could not sustain itself.
By contrast, everything about the NFL is taken so damn seriously. Every Monday brings a vicious dissection of Sunday, with Tuesday through Saturday gradually morphing into a watered-down, vague, talking-head nightmare where one man (usually the QB) is ripped apart over whether or not he has what it takes to win the Superbowl — a game weeks or months away, decided by dozens and dozens of other employees of that team, not just him.
If Russell Westbrook was covered like Tony Romo after each game, we’d have a pro… Oh wait, we actually did go through that once.
Okay, so some NBA narratives balloon so big that they are talked about 24/7/365. (See: LeBron James.) But these are outliers, players and coaches who are so great that we, basketball fans, can’t consider them as normal within the NBA universe. It’s like the timeless Spider-man quote: “With great power comes great, fantastical speculations about who you are with and what you are doing every waking minute of each day, God Bless America.”
In general, though, basketball fans really just want to talk about the games. They want to retweet video clips of sexy dunks and violent blocks. They want to latch onto advanced stats, counting stats, made-up stats — anything that can help prove their point in a friendly debate between Player X and Player Y. From late October to, well, right around now, NBA fans are in paradise — enjoying the nightly lineup on League Pass; watching the most entertaining program in America, Inside the NBA, each Thursday; and refreshing their Twitter timelines all night to participate in the online conversation.
(Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images)
There is no player or team that is garnishing more admiration from NBA fans these days than Rudy Gobert and the Utah Jazz. On Monday, Gobert collected 22 of his team’s 61 rebounds in a 94-66 demolishing of the Charlotte Hornets. The Stifle Tower has helped make Utah an elite defensive team this year, and particularly since taking over the starting center job from Enes Kanter. The Jazz bullied the Hornets into 29.5 percent shooting from the field, 26.5 percent shooting from deep, and a puny nine assists. The win was business as usual for Utah, a team that has won 13 of its past 16 games, and is outscoring opponents by 8.3 points per 100 possessions when Gobert is on the floor.
Now, Gobert isn’t doing this by himself. He isn’t walking the bottom of the ocean on his tip-toes while lifting his teammates above the surface — although that would be a sick tweet. Quin Snyder, a disciple of the Gregg Popovich coaching tree, has turned one of the game’s most stale, uneventful offenses from a year ago into a living, breathing organism. His confidence in the Gobert/Derrick Favors frontcourt has much to do with Utah’s new identity, an evolutionary Memphis Grizzlies look down low with play-making wing in Hayward and a collection of skilled (albeit painfully young) guards.
The Jazz were never going to be Finals contenders this season, but as Utah has grown and established its current identity under Snyder, NBA fans have taken notice, watching this suddenly fun basketball story take flight each night on League Pass. What makes Utah exciting to watch is separate from their limited short-term odds of winning a championship; it’s the birth of a basketball identity for this previously dizzy organization that has fans anticipating its bright future.
And, I mean, come on, Gobert is unbelievable.
ICYMI: This Rudy Gobert dunk. https://t.co/dmMUClikSp
— RealGM (@RealGM) March 13, 2015
There isn’t anything like the Utah Jazz in the NFL, a league that has built its empire with the bodies of casual fans and bean-dip enthusiasts. NBA fans like you and me, we’re junkies. The household names, the LeBrons and Durants, yeah they turn heads. But next time you’re talking hoops at a dinner party or cafe, make sure to bring up the emerging title wave in Salt Lake City. If whomever you’re talking to drops some “I think Rodney Hood can be this team’s late-career Ray Allen” or “You know, Dante Exum really has impressed me since the trade deadline”, then you know you’re truly in great basketball company.
