Jazz Are Red Hot but We May Have Heard This Tune Before

The Utah Jazz are the hottest team in the NBA, but they haven’t elicited much noise, which may seem odd. In their last three seasons, the Jazz have won 41, 26, and 42 games, not quite the résumé you’d expect for a team that starts the season playing .875 ball. While the Jazz were picked by some pundits to win their division, the Northwest Division ranks only second to the Atlantic in feebleness.The real reason that the hypemasters may be sitting on their hands about the Jazz start is that we’ve seen it all before. Utah started that 26-win season in 2004 by winning six of their first seven, and they were impressive victories, thrashing the Lakers by 26, Denver by 24, and defending champion Detroit by 15. That run was met with scads of puff pieces proclaiming a new winning era in Utah led by forwards Carlos Boozer and Andrei Kirilenko and center Mehmet Okur. Instead of running away with their division, the Jazz stumbled and fell hard. They lost 10 of their next 12 and never stopped. By Christmas they were 11–16 and stayed in freefall for rest of the season.Injuries were cited as the cause for the Jazz’s tumble, but while Boozer and Kirilenko did miss time with a variety of ailments, they continued to lose when they returned to full strength. The real reason was backcourt weakness. In other words, the Jazz had succeeded in only half the daunting task of replacing their Hall of Fame bound duo of guard John Stockton and forward Karl Malone.The advanced statistical analysis of the Jazz season bore this out. Using the four factors of winning devised by Dean Oliver, author of “Basketball on Paper,” the Jazz were particularly strong in rebounding, grabbing 32% of their own misses and 72% of all possible defensive boards. However on the perimeter, they struggled. Their turnover percentage, 17.1, ranked 28th in the league — they were giving the ball away on one out of every six possessions. Combine that with terrible shooting, 26th on both sides of the ball in Effective Field Goal Percentage, a stat that factors in an extra point for treys, and it’s easy to see why the Jazz only won 26 games, their hot start notwithstanding.There were other problems too that kept the Jazz mired in mediocrity last season. Coach Jerry Sloan feuded with Carlos Arroyo, the team’s only halfway productive guard, then ran him out of town. Also he wasn’t comfortable with Okur’s high-post style. Throughout his playing days and in both of his coaching stints, Sloan had worked with low-post centers; however, Okur’s range makes him an ideal paint clearer by drawing opposing big men to the arc and beyond to defend his potent outside shot. Sloan began to acclimate to Okur’s game as the team improved by 15 wins. And after the All-Star break, the Jazz finally began to develop a backcourt.Their first round pick Deron Williams, who was chosen ahead of 2006 Rookie of the Year Chris Paul, spent the first 50 games of the season making the Jazz look stupid; for the final portion of year, he made his opponents look dumber. Williams averaged 13.5 points and 5.5 assists a game. He took care of the ball (only 1.6 turnovers per contest) and shot exceptionally well, at 47.2%.The 22-year-old has continued his development this season. He’s averaging 16.9 points and 8.5 dimes while shooting 51% from the field. Friday, he torched Boston for 28 points and 14 assists. I’ll go out on a limb and say that he likes the new ball.The starting frontcourt trio and key reserve Matt Harpring are all having solid seasons (Okur is shooting 42% from behind the arc and taking three a game),but the other guard position remains a weakness. The Jazz are hoping that either rookie Ronnie Brewer or second year guard C.J. Miles, who arrived straight out of Dallas Skyline High School a year ago and spent much of last season in the Development League, will grow into the job. Neither is sporting promising numbers just yet, but, with their teammates playing at this level, they have a few weeks to come up to speed.The Jazz aren’t a stellar defensive team, which may surprise some since Sloan was a tenacious defender as a player and the Jazz had a reputation through the ’90s as a good defensive team. However that reputation was a carryover from the teams that featured Mark Eaton in the ’80s that led the league in Defensive Efficiency. Since the mid-’90s, the Jazz have been a middling defensive club. They made their mark as a very efficient offensive team — the Stockton-Malone squads were almost always in the top five of Offensive Efficiency, and this team is presently ranked second in the league.The wariness in embracing the Jazz is understandable. What happened two years ago is like showing up for a Herbie Hancock concert expecting to see legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter and bassist Ron Carter and instead getting an electronic band meekly trying to recreate the keyboardist’s fluke pop hits of decades ago. But this Jazz team looks to be for real. The evolution of a backcourt, the old coach learning new tricks, and a relatively injury free season should get them back in the mix of the Western Conference elite.mjohnson@nysun.com

Jazz Are Red Hot but We May Have Heard This Tune Before

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