The Utah Jazz are among the NBA’s hottest teams having won 21 of their last 23 games to pull into a tie for fifth in the Western Conference, two games clear of ninth.
Utah got off to a tough start to the year having lost star forward Gordon Hayward to Boston in free agency and seeing their current centerpiece Rudy Gobert battle some injury issues. While it took some time and growing pains, the Jazz are now firing on all cylinders and are a team that looks poised to be a tough out come playoff time, led by the efforts of Gobert and rookie sensation Donovan Mitchell.
Gobert is a contender for Defensive Player of the Year, even having missed more than 20 games this season, and he’s very pleased with where the Jazz are right now. After losing Hayward, Utah very well could have decided to hit the reset button, but instead decided to press forward for another playoff run and that seems to be working out quite well for them.
After Utah’s latest victory, a 103-97 win over the lowly Kings, Gobert spoke with USA Today’s Sam Amick about the problems with tanking and why he thinks the Jazz made the right decision to continue trying to win and continue building that kind of culture in Utah.
“Just try to teach players how to make winning plays, not only good basketball plays but winning plays,” Gobert said in explaining coach Quin Snyder’s system. “Teach every single one to help the team win games. A lot of teams are very good doing skill work, strength work. But if you want to win, you have to teach a player how to win. That’s why I don’t believe in tanking, all that stuff. I believe you learn how to win by winning. You don’t learn how to win by losing on purpose to get a 19-year-old who you’ve never seen.”
It’s not a surprise that a player is anti-tanking and the anti-tanking crowd will very much appreciate this quote. There’s absolutely some truth to learning how to win and the importance of that, and there is merit to the argument that players don’t develop some of the necessary skills needed for success when on a losing team.
That said, Utah also was in a unique position in that with the roster as constructed when Hayward left, there was a floor to how bad they could be with Gobert, Rubio, Joe Ingles and others. Few would’ve expected Mitchell to be as good as he has been, which has boosted their credentials as a contender as well, and with how many other teams decided to press the reset button this year, there wasn’t an awful lot of opportunity for the Jazz to go for a top pick even if they wanted to.
There’s no doubt this strategy has worked out for the Jazz and it’s certainly a strong example for franchises in similar positions that may have some quality talent on their roster but not that superstar on how to go about the team-building process. That said, just like tanking won’t work for everyone, there’s also the potential for that model to stall out and produce undesirable results as well if you don’t have the kind of core Utah has (and the kind of luck in landing such a talented rookie in the mid-first round).
