NBA.com wants the world to know they don’t like the Utah Jazz.
The Utah Jazz had a solid preseason, going 3-2 and getting most guys some minutes at various points. But apparently, the Jazz should’ve been more focused on winning games, not getting guys reps. Seems like an odd thing to do, winning preseason basketball, but NBA.com decided to rank the teams heading into the season based on their performances this preseason.
A totally sensible thing to do. Did the Jazz fare well with this approach? No, no they did not. Did the Jazz get handed the short stick due to how the rankings were conceived? You better believe it. The Jazz played the Los Angeles Clippers back to back to start the preseason, and then hardly played any of their best players against the New Zealand Breakers and the Sacramento Kings.
But apparently, we have enough data to draw from the preseason that the Jazz are only the 24th-best team in the league.
And a lot of the rationale stems from the team not taking enough threes, and being out-scored with three of their four best players on the court at the same time; Lauri Markkanen, John Collins, and Walker Kessler.
"The Jazz were outscored by eight points in 29 minutes with Markkanen, John Collins and Walker Kessler on the floor, even though the Jazz shot 9-for-18 from 3-point range and their opponents shot just 6-for-20 from deep in those minutes."
It seems disingenuous to judge those three on a handful of minutes across five games, but here we are. The Jazz are going to have a chance to silence critics and doubters early or send us all into a tailspin of overreaction that the sky is falling as the team will face the top five teams from last year’s Western Conference finally standings.
If the Jazz come out with a solid record, fans will be optimistic. If they start 0-5, oh boy, let’s just hope they don’t start 0-5.