Utah Jazz: The five worst ‘Big 3’ trios in franchise history

Here are some sad-looking bunches the Utah Jazz had to roll with across their 41 years in the league.

With all this extra time to talk about the long history of Utah Jazz basketball, I recently wrote about the best trios and power combinations the Utah Jazz have put together. The best trios had multiple All-Star and playoff appearances in their time together.

They had many moments of brilliance, whether it was a baseball pass that went the full 94 feet from John Stockton to Karl Malone in the NBA Finals or a high lob tossed from Ricky Rubio snagged out of the stratosphere and into the basket by Rudy Gobert.

Fortunately, Jazz fans have abundantly more of these memories than they do of the complete opposite: missing the playoffs, below-average play on both sides of the ball, and a dearth of talent for the best players on the roster.

It’s remarkable that a small market franchise like Utah has only missed the playoffs only twelve times out of a possible 40 tries. Only eight times have the Jazz won less than 50 percent of their games in a single season since being moved to Utah.

They have never held a season where they won less than 20 games, which usually someone in the league has to accomplish every season (in 2018-19 there were three teams that failed to win 20 games).

In today’s article, I will be discussing “Big 3” combinations from the less than memorable years of the Utah Jazz.

As a small disclaimer, the particular order of these trios is based on my opinion and the talent of the players on paper. Overachieving compared to expectations won’t help or hurt the ranking of the trio.

A big factor that impacts how far a team goes, particularly a lesser team in terms of talent, is the coach.

You will shortly see that some coaches in Utah Jazz history were able to get the best out of their players despite the less than ideal circumstances, and other coaches took the team where everyone expected them to go.

So let’s get started with the worst trios the Jazz front office has put together the past 41 years.