The Utah Jazz have always been a team that competes historically.
We talk a lot about the Utah Jazz hoping to have a bounce-back season in 2023-2024, and for good reason. They’re loaded with young players that could be huge for the team, they have a budding superstar in Lauri Markkanen and a defensive dynamo in Walker Kessler. The team is set to succeed.
And even if the team wasn’t as deep and impressive as it is, there’s another reason that the Utah Jazz may be able to find their way back to the playoffs. See, no matter the era, no matter the coach, no matter the stars, the Jazz have perpetually been a team that finds its way to success.
The Jazz have only had 10 out of 45 seasons where they’ve had a losing record. Of those 35 non-losing seasons, 32 of them saw the Jazz make the playoffs. And in their entire run in the great state of Utah, they never lost more than 59 games in a season.
They are the only team as such to have never lost 60 games once in their entire franchise history. Even when they were in New Orleans, the Jazz were able to avoid losing 60 games. No other club can claim that. So because they’ve never had 60 losses, it’s also easy to understand why the Jazz are one of six teams to never have the first overall pick either.
They join the Denver Nuggets, Oklahoma City Thunder, Miami Heat, Memphis Grizzlies, and Indiana Pacers as teams that have never won the right to draft first overall. Considering the Nuggets and Heat are also teams that don’t suck for long, it’s not surprising to see them included in such a list.
Since the 1983-1984 season, the Jazz have never had more than three back-to-back losing seasons in a row, and even then, the team improved in wins each and every season. So it’d be fair to say there are expectations for this club, even if it wasn’t as deep and as talented as it currently is.