In the 162-game baseball season or the 16-game NFL season, an improvement of just over 10 games cannot be compared. Such an improvement is titanic in the NFL, comparatively modest in baseball.
In hockey, 10 more wins in a regular season could mean something hugely significant, but with overtime and shootout losses counting for a point, a plus-10 win differential from the previous season might mean a gain of only 10 to 12 points. That’s certainly a noticeable step forward, but it wouldn’t be the same as a 20-point increase, which is what 10 more regulation wins would bring.
It’s in professional basketball where a 10-win improvement can:
A) be flatly and evenly measured each season (unlike hockey, which depends on shootout or overtime results);
B) always be less contextually impressive than in the NFL, and more contextually impressive than in MLB.
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How many teams made improvements of 10 games or more in the 2015 NBA season, relative to 2014? Seven.
Cleveland, Atlanta and Milwaukee all improved by more than 17 games, the Hawks and Bucks by well over 20, nearly one-third of the total number of games in an NBA season (27, the whole number closest to one-third of 82).
Golden State and Boston also improved by more than 10 games. Golden State has a No. 1 overall playoff seed to show for its gains, and Boston is just about to parlay its forward strides into an unexpected playoff berth, barring an abrupt plot twist over the next three nights.
This leaves two other franchises on the list.
The New Orleans Pelicans might not make the playoffs, but they still have a chance to sneak in as they battle the Oklahoma City Thunder for the final spot in the Western Conference.
The one team with an improvement of at least 10 games this season which is certain to miss the playoffs is the one residing in Salt Lake City.
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It is more than a little ironic that New Orleans and Utah are the two teams to improve by at least 10 games this season, yet enter this week with the worst playoff prospects (and in Utah’s case, know for certain that it will miss the postseason).
New Orleans, for younger fans unaware of the fact, used to be the home of the Jazz (the basketball team, not the musical form). The only vintage Jazz music ever played in Salt Lake City was orchestrated by John Stockton and given a bold sound by Karl Malone. Both places — the Big Easy and Salt Lake City — have known only heartache in their respective relationships with pro hoops. Louis Armstrong or any prominent member of the Marsalis family could have played some sad, soulful tunes for these two franchises in separate parts of the United States.
What separates these two areas and the organizations in them is that while NBA basketball left New Orleans for nearly 25 years (beginning in 1979), the Jazz have established a lengthy history in Utah.
Starting with the Frank Layden years at the Salt Palace, Utah eventually became a top-four team in the Western Conference in the latter half of the 1980s. This standard of quality was maintained by Jerry Sloan for 22-plus seasons, save for a brief string of non-playoff appearances from 2004 through 2006. Only once in his tenure did Sloan fail to guide the Jazz to a .500 season or better. Even when a Deron Williams power play essentially foreced him out midway through the 2010-2011 campaign, Sloan’s Jazz were 31-23 at the time.
Saying that the Jazz were a top-four team in the West for almost all of Sloan’s tenure is not inaccurate, but it still undervalues what Sloan did for the franchise. He didn’t merely get Utah to the second round of the playoffs or better in half of his 22 full seasons; Sloan guided the franchise to six Western Conference Finals appearances, two of which led to the NBA Finals.
The history of the Jazz in Utah was defined by patient, steady building — initially by Layden, and then (at a higher level) by Sloan. The NBA has consistently shown us that teams must go through stages of improvement before reaching the top, and the Jazz were very much part of this dynamic in their greatest decade, the 1990s.
The Jazz made three conference finals in that decade before finally making the NBA Finals in their fourth attempt, in 1997. Once they won the Western Conference, they defended it the next year. Sloan’s 1998 team was his masterwork, and it took a perfect (or perfectly awful, depending on your perspective…) series of events in the final minute of Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals for the Chicago Bulls to not only repeat as champions, but to defeat the Jazz in a second straight Finals series.
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A brief detour here:
The greatness of Michael Jordan is rooted partly in the fact that he was never taken to seven games in an NBA Finals series. The Phoenix Suns’ loss to the Bulls in Game 6 of the 1993 Finals bore some eerie similarities to 1998, but what separated those two closeouts by Jordan and the Bulls is that in 1998, Scottie Pippen was not going to be healthy for Game 7.
Had Utah won Game 6 in 1998, it really and truly would have owned a good chance of knocking off one of the NBA’s greatest dynasties. Jerry Sloan and his small-market franchise came so close to tasting ultimate greatness. “Number 23,” the man widely (but non unanimously) regarded as the greatest basketball player ever (say what you want about that non-call involving Bryon Russell…) had to do everything in his power to prevent Utah from gaining a Game 7 against Chicago in the Finals.
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Back to the main road:
The 1998 heartbreaker marked the last hurrah for the Stockton-and-Malone Jazz, and while Utah did reach another conference finals series in 2007, everyone knows that particular run was made possible by one of the rare 8-over-1 upsets in NBA playoff history, Golden State stunning Dallas in six games. The Jazz are an organization which is trying to steadily build once again with a largely new collection of central figures. Longtime owner Larry Miller died. Layden has retired. Former general manager Kevin O’Connor is still in the front office, but Dennis Lindsey is now the general manager after coming over from the San Antonio Spurs. Quin Snyder is the current coach after the forgettable and unproductive run of Tyrone Corbin.
The process of moving forward has definitely occurred this season. People in and around the organization should be pleased… and have every right to be.
Rudy Gobert is the game-changing man in the middle who enabled the Jazz to take off — defensively, and as a collective whole — in the second half of the season. Gobert’s DeAndre Jordan-level rebounding numbers and overall defensive presence enabled Utah to win more games since Feb. 6 than it did before that point in the season. As you know, Feb. 6 was just before the All-Star break, which occurs roughly two-thirds of the way through the season in terms of games played. “Game-changer” is hardly an overstatement as far as Gobert is concerned.
Gordon Hayward’s averaging nearly 20 points per game… and is only going to get better as he enters his prime years. Derrick Favors is a mountain of a power forward who is complementing Gobert and giving Utah a distinctly Memphis-like identity in the frontcourt. If the Jazz can get polished play out of their guards next season — it’s the next big occurrence everyone in the organization is hoping for — this team can ripen into something special.
Again, an improvement of more than 10 games should rightly please the Jazz, from the top of the management structure to those responsible for mopping the floor after block-charge plays under the baskets at Energy Solutions Arena.
There’s just one problem: This is the Western Conference we’re talking about, and it’s something the New Orleans Pelicans are aware of as well.
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Provided that Oklahoma City doesn’t struggle next season (in other words, provided that Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka can stay healthy), we could very well have another situation in which a 48-win team stays home for the playoffs. It happened last season with Phoenix, and had OKC become the 57- to 62-win team we were expecting this season, Dallas — currently 49-31 — would have been the eighth playoff team in the West in 2015.
For added perspective on the West-East divide, consider that Cleveland — having just eclipsed the 50-win mark — would be no better than sixth in the West… and that’s while playing clearly inferior competition. The West will have nine teams with winning records, the East only five (unless Milwaukee wins out and avoids the .500 mark with a 42-40 record).
It’s a sobering thought, then, for all the Utah Jazz have accomplished this season: They could improve by 10 additional games next season and STILL miss the playoffs.
When the Denver Nuggets upset the Seattle Supersonics in the first round of the 1994 playoffs — the first time an 8 beat a 1 in the first round (and that was with a best-of-5 format) — it felt like a seismic shock. Over two decades later, the notion of seeing a 49- or 50-win eighth seed beat a top seed in the current Western Conference doesn’t carry nearly as much shock value.
The Utah Jazz are steadily, patiently building… recalling the mid-1980s and the genesis of one of the NBA’s more consistently dependable franchises.
This time, their climb to the upper tiers of the Western Conference is going to be so much more arduous than it was roughly 30 years ago. It’s a sad Jazz melody the folks in New Orleans could appreciate.
