Mid-Season Report Card: Jazz

Take note everyone, the Jazz are for real and back with a vengeance. Can they beat the defending champs? Stats say yes.

Flashback

Skipping through the drama between Gobert and Mitchell, the press conference and all the like, Utah went up 3-1 on Denver last year and surprised many. Their meltdown led to questions about the locker room and much more, but one could look at it another way.

That series was one for the ages as Donovan Mitchell and Jamal Murray had one of, if not the best individual duels in a playoff series, scoring at clips that were absurd. Game 7 rolled around and was reminiscent of when the league had low-scoring, defensive focused games on the regular, and both teams were going to fight until death. The Nuggets won in the closest fashion possible, as Mike Conley got an incredible look from three that was an in and out heartbreaker. You had to feel for the Jazz, losing in that way, but Utah didn't expect anyone to cry for them.

Flash forward

That fire is burning in the Jazz as they currently boast the best record in basketball. Are they for real? Yes. The offensive arsenal is ridiculously efficient, and their shooters are that of volume of accuracy.

Gobert is laughing his way to the bank as well as to another DPOY award. Mitchell is one of the league's superstars, despite what Shaq says. How the hell do you stop them?

Tested, but not with pure solvency

The Bucks felt like this the past two years, rolling through the regular season with the best record back-to-back years, but ultimately burned out in the playoffs. The Jazz hope to not repeat that, but it's certainly possible that their shooters cool down a bit come playoff time or even as early as the second half of the season.

If this doesn't happen and they keep up their amazing run, they'll all but certainly face the Lakers or Clippers in the conference finals, and stats would favor them over the Los Angeles squads. As we know with analytics, they're great, but they cannot predict what a 36-year-old specimen will do to you in a seven game series nor can they account for chemistry and championship DNA.

The Jazz would have their hands full with either team, and their experiment in the regular season will have to keep its structure so that it doesn't collapse against cold-blooded killers like LeBron, AD, or Kawhi.

Grade:

A+