With the year 2019 coming to a close, we made a list of the five best players the Utah Jazz had this past year.
The Utah Jazz have had a lot of ups and downs in the year 2019, including a fantastic finish to the regular season followed by a disappointing playoff series. The roller coaster swung back up when the team acquired Mike Conley and Bojan Bogdanovic in the summer to keep up in the arms race with fellow Western Conference rivals.
Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert had a great showing for their respective countries in the FIBA World Cup. Gobert dominated the glass and was one of the best players in the tournament. Mitchell struggled to find the bottom of the bucket at first, but showed an improved passing game and eventually his shot returned back to form near the end of Team USA’s run.
Through a roller coast of a season, the Jazz find themselves at 19-12, the best 31 game start in the Quin Snyder era. This iteration of the Utah Jazz was supposed to be the best since John Stockton and Karl Malone played back in the dinosaur ages, but despite the hot start the Utah Jazz find themselves in only sixth place in the Western Conference and outside the realm of true contenders for a title.
The good news is that Utah has found five players that are starting to fire on all cylinders, and there is still time for others to find their groove before the playoffs. They are only five games back of the top seed in the Western Conference, and have recently added Jordan Clarkson to partially solve their bench’s talent deficit.
I made a list of the top 5 Jazz players for the year 2019, but before we get started there needs to be some praise given to those who just missed the cut. Shout out to Jae Crowder, Royce O’Neale, Mike Conley, and especially Derrick Favors for all the hard work put in to make the Utah Jazz a better team.
Their contributions were much needed for the Jazz’s playoff run and 19-12 start to the 2019-20 season, but weren’t as crucial as the following players, starting with the man who holds the longest active streak of consecutive games played.