Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
The upstart Jazz are playing a brand of basketball that other teams can learn from.
I finally got around to watching Netflix’s “The Redeem Team” documentary this week. There were various moments that I found interesting or illuminating, even if I found the premise – overwhelming favorite attempts to bounce back from defeat – both bland and weak.
One part of the documentary in particular caught my attention. At some point the lightbulb went off for the coaches and the myriad NBA superstars that they had to change their style of play in order to win at the international level. In one particularly notable interview, Coach K sits down, looks into the camera, and states that despite the talent gap between them and the other countries, Team USA would only win if they adapted to everyone else’s game.
The implication was abundantly clear, even if Coach K, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and the rest of the interviewees seemed to have it go directly over their heads. The default style of American basketball is so bad, that even a talent disparity of epic proportions isn’t always enough to negate a team that simply plays a different brand of basketball.
It was jarring hearing some of the most powerful people in the basketball world talk so openly about the situation, while still missing the blatant point staring them in the face: if our style of basketball can’t beat less-talented teams playing a different style of basketball, then why is this still our style of basketball?
Shortly after finishing the documentary I turned on League Pass to catch some of the evening games. The Utah Jazz, unexpected darlings of the NBA season, were nursing a fourth quarter lead, on the road, against the Dallas Mavericks, expected darlings of the NBA season. The Mavs, with little respect for my literary narratives, managed to climb out of their hole and eke out a three-point win. It turns out having the sizable talent edge still is enough on most days.
Even with the loss, the Jazz remain just one game off of the leading pace in the Western Conference. A team that was supposed to be driving the lottery train that’s headed directly for Victor Wembanyama’s home has twice as many wins as losses. And they’re not empty wins, either: they beat the Denver Nuggets by 21 points on opening night; they bested the New Orleans Pelicans when NOLA was still at full strength; they swept a back-to-back against the Memphis Grizzlies.
It’s a bit of a stretch to call the Jazz Greece or Spain or Argentina, while slapping the Team USA label on the NBA bigwigs. But there are parallels to be found. Absent the star talent that so many NBA squads rely on, Utah has fully bought in on team basketball. They’re working together in a way that should make a basketball purist grin, even if it makes many players grimace. I’m probably the only person outside of Salt Lake City imploring you to throw them on League Pass, but do me a favor and try it.
In a game defined by pick and rolls and isolation, the Jazz rank 25th and 20th, respectively, in frequency of each. They’re 10th in the league in passes per game, despite operating at a league average pace. The Jazz aren’t alone here. The San Antonio Spurs, co-drivers of the Wembanyana-bound train, shockingly sit at 5-3. They’ve run just 18 isolation plays all year, which is only a hair more than the Mavericks average per game. The Indiana Pacers, who surprisingly sport the league’s seventh-best offense in a rebuild year, are the only team in San Antonio’s stratosphere when it comes to isolation infrequency.
That doesn’t always correlate to great offense. Utah is still playing better defense than offense, and San Antonio’s offensive machine is nothing to write home about. But it’s emblematic of an overarching style that these teams – Utah in particular – employ. A fully selfless, team-centric approach on both ends of the court.
Watching Utah go toe-to-toe with Dallas, a Western Conference finalist just half a year ago, was like watching Coach K’s Team USA explanation get flushed out in real time. If a team has to adjust their style to beat a lesser squad, just imagine how good they’d be if they were the ones that others had to adjust to.
There’s a lesson there for the NBA’s top teams. And yes, Utah’s hot start will fade. San Antonio’s loss column will catch up to its net rating. Indy’s awful defense will be too much for their upstart offense to make up for. Over a six-month season the teams will fall off, and even if they didn’t, they’d be hopeless in a seven-game series. Talent doesn’t always win out in a single game, but it does in a larger sample.
But imagine if a team had both. Imagine if the team with the talent advantage was also the team playing a brand of basketball that less talented groups had to adjust to. If the Jazz, highlighted by castaways Jordan Clarkson, Kelly Olynyk, and Lauri Markkanen are any indication, that sort of a team would be pretty damn good.
Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Stay tuned for the second part where we dig deeper into the style of play these surprise teams are using.
