How do the Utah Jazz compare to the Golden State Warriors?
Utah Jazz vs Golden State Warriors: Star Power
While the Utah Jazz may enjoy an advantage over the Golden State Warriors in depth, the Warriors do boast the single best player in the matchup in Stephen Curry.
The league’s first and only unanimous MVP revolutionized basketball. Any of our readers over 30 need only to go play a game of pickup with some kids under 20 to tangibly feel the difference Curry single handedly made in changing the game. Last season, he casually led the NBA in scoring with 32.0 points per contest.
It’s difficult to identify any distinct second-best player in this matchup. If we go by Win Shares (WS) in their last active season, the order is Rudy Gobert (11.3), Donovan Mitchell (6.2), and then Klay Thompson (5.3). However, it’s worth noting that these 3 special NBA talents play such drastically different roles that they hardly merit comparison.
Gobert, of course, is the lifeblood of a strong Utah Jazz defense, but his potential to get played off the floor in specific matchups is well-documented. The Warriors may be especially well-equipped to do exactly that, as Draymond Green is effectively the archetype for the small-ball center. If lineups featuring him in that role force Quin Snyder to deploy Rudy Gay at the 5 for long stretches of a hypothetical playoff series, even the most stalwart analytics-booster won’t be able to claim that Gobert’s Win Shares render him a better player than Mitchell or Thompson.
Meanwhile, Mitchell is the lifeblood of a strong Utah Jazz offense. Accordingly, his 6.2 WS are higher than Thompson’s 5.3. Still, Thompson’s value to the Golden State Warriors may be difficult to measure with analytics. He’s not as essential to their offense as Mitchell is to Utah’, or to their defense as Gobert is to the same, but he’s the best two-way player in the grouping.
Regardless of how one chooses to rank Mitchell, Gobert and Thompson, the main point that emerges is that the Warriors have the best player in this series, and another player with a case as the second-best. That’s enough to award the Warriors points in this facet of their matchup with the Utah Jazz.
Verdict: Golden State Warriors
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It seems that in a head-to-head comparison, the Utah Jazz and the Golden State Warriors come to a stalemate when assessing them in terms of floor-spacing, depth and star power. All we can say with certainty is that fans of both franchises should tune in whenever the two squads square off in 2021-22.