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The Jazz were favored against Denver in 2020 and owned three of the first four games of the series only to suffer three straight narrow defeats. Recent postseasons, alas, have gone the opposite direction.
The first few iterations of Quin Snyder’s Jazz teams overachieved in the playoffs, most notably when they ran the Thunder in circles in a 4-2 series win in 2018. Yet things have been increasingly weird in Utah ever since it blew a 3-1 lead against Denver in the 2020 bubble. Gobert and Mitchell are both still on the good side of 30. Yes, the Jazz just lost in the first round in disappointing fashion, but they won 49 games in an accredited basketball conference this season and had the league’s third-best scoring margin and its top-ranked offense. It’s been a heck of a run, even if it didn’t result in a conference finals trip, and it doesn’t necessarily have to end right now. Amazingly, they did all this immediately after their best player at the time, Gordon Hayward, bolted as an unrestricted free agent in 2017.
They had the NBA’s best record in 2020-21, won two playoff series, had multiple All-Stars for three straight seasons and got three players into the 2021 game. We don’t know yet if this is the end, but it sure feels that way.įor half a decade, the Rudy Gobert– Donovan Mitchell version of the Utah Jazz has been among the league’s most successful teams.