Utah Jazz: In defense of Greg Ostertag, who was better than you remember

To this day, people gripe about Greg Ostertag’s time with the Utah Jazz. Here’s a newsflash for you: despite his shortcomings, he was actually a decent player.

When I published my list of the 15 best draft picks in Utah Jazz history earlier this summer, I caught some flak for including Greg Ostertag in the list. That probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise; few players in Jazz history were as maligned by fans and the media alike as Ostertag.

Even Ostertag himself admits that he wasn’t always on the ball during his time in Salt Lake City. During a 2017 radio interview with on 97.5/1280 The Zone, ‘Tag had this to say —

"“I’ve got a lot of regret in my life. One of them is not being the player for those guys that I could have been and should have been, taking for granted that I was seven foot, and only being as good as I was, not being better.”"

To this day, fans bemoan the fact that he signed a big contract with the team and seemingly fell off the map beginning the very next season. For my part, I received multiple tweets about his falling short of the mark after putting out the aforementioned list.

And while I understand the sentiment, I’m here to tell you now that a lot of the bad juju is sorely misplaced.

I’ve always felt that Ostertag was largely pretty good, particularly for a guy drafted 27th. In fact, over the course of his decade-plus career in the Association, he was an overwhelmingly positive presence on the hardwood. The numbers back it up, too.

I combed through statistics going all the way back to the 1996-97 season and of the 10 years Ostertag played during that span, he posted a positive net rating in eight of them. In fact, he boasted the best annual net rating on the Jazz three times, was in the team’s top five six times and bested Karl Malone and John Stockton with regularity.

During the ’96-97 campaign, the Jazz outscored opponents by a whopping 15.9 points per 100 possessions with Ostertag on the court.

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Most of his value came on the defensive end, where Ostertag remains one of the more underrated players in franchise history. He was so good there, he posted a positive defensive box plus/minus every year he played, finishing in the top 10 league-wide three times.

That defensive presence was largely a product of his rim protection, which ranks among the best in league history. ‘Tag’s 1.7 blocks per game rank 37th-best all-time and his 1293 career blocks also crack the all-time top 50.

Was he Mark Eaton or Rudy Gobert? Not by a long shot, but he was solid for 11 years, which is more than most big men can say.

And about that “huge” contract that he never lived up to, a six-year $39 million pact inked in 1998 — it probably wasn’t as grandiose as your fuzzy memory might tell you.

In the first year of the deal, Ostertag was slated to make just over $4 million (before a lockout cut the season to 50 games). The best data out there on salary figures at the time have Ostertag outside the top 60 highest-paid players in the NBA that season. In the final and most expensive year of the deal, the 2003-04 season, his $8.6 million salary didn’t crack the top 50 league-wide.

Ultimately, the Jazz may have gotten exactly what they paid for, fan angst notwithstanding.

I’ll leave you with this, a fact that gets back to my draft rankings: late first-round picks rarely set the basketball world ablaze, but Ostertag outplayed his draft position by a wide margin. Here are some of the pivot men taken ahead of Ostertag in 1995, when he was drafted at No. 27 overall —

• Bryant Reeves (No. 6), who lasted all of six years and never saw the postseason.
• Cherokee Parks (12), a bench guy who played for seven different teams.
• George Zidek (22), who played 135 career games, averaging 3.4 points and 0.1 blocks.
• David Vaughn (25): four teams,118 games played, 2.9 points and 0.4 blocks per contest

The only centers taken ahead of Ostertag that matched or exceeded his output were Theo Ratliff and Kurt Thomas. If we were to re-draft that class today, knowing what we know now, there’s a better than average chance that Ostertag doesn’t escape the lottery.

Say what you will about his career, the fact remains that Greg Ostertag was a lot better than given credit for.