Are the Utah Jazz for real?
The expectation was to tank for Victor Wembanyama or Scoot Henderson after trading All-Stars Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell last summer. Instead, the Jazz led the Western Conference at 10-3 through Friday's games -- a game better their start in 2020-21 en route to the NBA's best regular-season record.
With each passing win, calling the team a fluke becomes more difficult. How well should we expect Utah to perform if this club sticks together over the course of the season? And is that potential worth more than trading veterans and playing for lottery positioning?
What can history tell us about the Jazz's start and their chances of maintaining a playoff spot in the Western Conference?
Throughout the NBA season, I answer your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet me directly at @kpelton, tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them to peltonmailbag@gmail.com.
In addition to the main question, this week's mailbag also tackles home-court advantage's effect over the course of the season and all-international starting fives.
"How long into the season do we go [if this keeps up] to go from 'the Jazz are frisky!' to 'the Jazz might be legit good?'"
-- @SethPartnow
I'm borrowing this question from my friend Seth Partnow of The Athletic, who posted it on Twitter recently. We're already in unprecedented territory with Utah.
The indispensable SportsOddsHistory.com has preseason lines available back through 1999-2000. In that span, no team with a preseason over/under total of fewer than 25 wins (the Jazz's was 23.5) had started better than 7-6 through their first 13 games.
Even if we expand to teams with lines of 35 wins or fewer, we get just two teams that started 9-4 or better: the 2011-12 Jazz (who finished the lockout-shortened season 36-30 and made the playoffs as the eighth seed in the West) and last season's Washington Wizards, who were also 10-3 at this stage.
The 2021-22 Wizards are an ominous precedent, going just 25-44 the rest of the way. Like Utah, Washington benefited from poor opponent shooting early in the season. Through 15 games, Wizards opponents made a league-low 31% of their 3s. The Jazz ranked second in this category entering Friday at 32%.
The rest of the season, Washington opponents made 37% of their 3s, the league's third-highest mark. There's no reason to believe Utah will see teams shoot that well the rest of the season, but it's indicative of how early returns for opponent shooting aren't predictive going forward.
For a more optimistic perspective, let's consider whether we should be comparing the Jazz to teams with such low expectations. After all, Utah's preseason over-under total assumed the team would trade away veterans by midseason and rest others. This version of the Jazz always looked more competitive.
If we rerun my preseason statistical projections using actual minutes played to date, Utah's expected wins total increases from 34.9 -- already far better than the Jazz's line -- to 38.6.
A team with a projection near .500 starting 10-3 is powerful evidence. If we change our comps to teams since 1999-2000 with preseason totals between 35 and 45 wins that started 9-4 or better, 22 of 24 made the playoffs. (The 2004-05 Cleveland Cavaliers, who missed on a tiebreaker at 42-40, and the 39-43 2017-18 Detroit Pistons are the exceptions. Also note the Portland Trail Blazers could join this group with a win Saturday in Dallas.)
The teams in this group won an average of 48.6 games, adjusting for shortened schedules, and seven of them reached the conference finals. That win average is in the same ballpark as projections from FiveThirtyEight (49 wins on average) and ESPN's Basketball Power Index (50).
Given those lofty projections, I don't think Utah should entertain playing for lottery positioning right now. Even if the Jazz somehow managed to get into one of the top three spots entering the drawing -- which would probably require going 10-59 the rest of the season or worse, based on Zach Kram's research on typical records for lottery teams for the Ringer -- that would give them a 27.4% chance at one of the top picks.
Still, finishing with a lottery pick outside the top two is better for Utah's long-term outlook than picking in the back half of the first round. But I don't think that upside is worth throwing away the potential we've seen from this version of the Jazz to make the playoffs and perhaps win a series.
With up to eight extra first-round picks up until 2029, Utah doesn't need to be in a hurry to get to the bottom. Those picks also mitigate concerns that the Jazz might overreact to an unexpected competitive season, as we've seen from the Phoenix Suns in 2013-14 when they were expected to tank but finished 48-34 instead.
Let's see where this Utah ride ends.
"Is home-court advantage stable throughout the season? Or does it get stronger or weaker as the season goes on?"
My assumption is yes, it's stable, but you know what happens when you assume. Graphing home-court advantage in 82-game seasons starting with 1989-90, and aggregating over five-game samples so as to reduce noise, the effect is almost like a sine wave, waxing and waning over the course of the schedule.
I'm not sure what to make of this variation, which has been even more pronounced in the past decade. We could certainly come up with plausible explanations, as the first trough in home-court advantage seems to come around the holidays and the second near the All-Star break. But given how easy it is to concoct reasons behind trends that are simply statistical noise, I don't want to jump to any conclusions.
"Has an NBA team ever started five international players before?"
-- @bashhoops
Per the Elias Sports Bureau via ESPN Stats & Information, it's happened six times in NBA history -- with some caveats.
The first starting lineup with five players born outside the United States came when the Utah Jazz started Raul Lopez, Raja Bell, Andrei Kirilenko, Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur on two occasions in February 2005. Boozer, who was born on a military base in Germany, doesn't really qualify as international to me.
The second team to do it was the San Antonio Spurs for two games in January 2014: Tony Parker, Cory Joseph, Marco Belinelli, Boris Diaw and Tim Duncan.
Like Bell, Duncan was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, making him an American citizen. He also played for the USA men's basketball team, so whether he's truly an international player is up for debate. That's probably why contemporary media accounts didn't make note of the starting lineup, which was overshadowed by the rematch of the previous year's NBA Finals against the Miami Heat.
The unambiguous answers came from recent Oklahoma City Thunder teams. On Jan. 27, 2020 -- with Chris Paul sitting out the day after close friend Kobe Bryant died -- the Thunder started Dennis Schroder in his place with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort, Danilo Gallinari and Steven Adams. The next season, Oklahoma City started Gilgeous-Alexander and Dort with Theo Maledon, Aleksej Pokusevski and Al Horford on March 11, 2021.