How do the Utah Jazz compare to the Phoenix Suns?

Last season, Utah Jazz fans could be forgiven if they watched the NBA Finals with a single thought recurring in their minds: that could have been us. 

It really could have been. The Phoenix Suns were not expected to participate in the league’s biggest dance heading into the 2020-21 season. They got there with a combination of luck, grit, and good old fashioned high-quality basketball. Although dropping the Finals to the Milwaukee Bucks, to say that the Suns surpassed expectations would be an understatement.

This season, Phoenix will not have the benefit of tempered expectations. They won’t be slipping under anybody’s radar. Yesterday, we published a piece about FiveThirtyEight’s esteemed projection model. It had the Utah Jazz finishing with the best record in the Western Conference, but it had the Phoenix Suns directly behind them with the second seed.

In fact, the projection had the Suns winning only a single game less than the Jazzmen (54 vs 53). Meanwhile, it gave each squad the same odds of making the playoffs (95%) and winning the title (9%) and actually gave the Suns a 1% better chance at making the NBA Finals (19%).

A thorough comparison of these two squads reinforces FiveThirtyEight’s findings. They’re about as close as close can get. Here, we’ll compare them on the basis of offense, defense and depth to try to figure out which of these two teams figures as most likely to rule the West.

(Assuming, that is, that Russell Westbrook can’t fit with LeBron James).