A little over 20 years ago, the Utah Jazz said goodbye to the legendary careers of John Stockton and Karl Malone. The Hall-of-Fame duo carried the franchise for 20 successful years of basketball.
Although Stockton and Malone never could bring the Jazz their first-ever championship, the tandem gave the franchise consistency and the fan base a sense of hope from year to year. Since then, the Jazz have gone through several different eras of relative talent and success.
Since the 2002-03 NBA season, the Jazz have produced just six losing seasons. This can be attributed to a couple of reasons.
One, because of luck. Sure, there is great draft talent each year, especially for a lottery selection, but history proves time again that it doesn’t always work out.
Although the Jazz have missed on so much talent throughout the years, they also managed to pick some great players like Deron Williams (2005), Rudy Gobert (2013), and Donovan Mitchell (2017). Each of these players went on to contribute to competitive 50-win teams and helped keep Utah on the NBA map.
The second reason? Impressive coaching and development.
Although the Jazz missed on talent through the draft from year to year, they were able to develop undrafted or second-round players that helped fill out the roster in more ways than one. The Jazz were certainly lucky to have enjoyed 23 years of coaching from late Hall-of-Famer Jerry Sloan, who, aside from his greatness with Stockton and Malone, coached the Williams and Carlos Boozer team to the 2007 Western Conference Finals.
After a short stint with Tyrone Corbin, the Jazz hired Quin Snyder, who helped develop Gobert into the superstar player he is today, and then paired his talents with another superstar in Mitchell. There's no question that the great coaching of Sloan and Snyder helped elevate the Jazz as they transitioned from one era to another.
Today's player-driven NBA is certainly a much different era than the 1980s and 1990’s, when it was uncommon for players not to stay with one team their entire career. Today, player movement is common, no matter the team or market.
Even the most sought-after markets have a hard time signing the players they want and, if a team manages to succeed, holding onto them for longer than a few years is the exception, not the rule. This is the new normal, but Jazz fans should feel reassured, lucky, and hopeful for their future, as grim as it may seem at this very moment in time.
Utah has never and will never compete for free agents the way other franchises do, but that should make the consistency of its success that much more impressive. The Jazz build their success through a much more sustainable method than teams in New York and Los Angeles do, where they have the luxury of rolling the dice on the next slate of big free agents every year.
Losing Mitchell, Gobert, and Snyder in one summer is hard to swallow as a fan, but history is on Jazz Nation's, and with the incredible amount of assets that were acquired over the summer, there is a lot more flexibility to return to competitive basketball sooner rather than you might think.
Follow Andrew on Twitter @ArembaczNBA.
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