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No. 9: Utah Jazz
Last Season: 38-44
11th place in West; missed playoffs
During the summer of 2013, the Utah Jazz decided to stop chasing the eighth seed with veterans and build something potentially bigger and better around their young core. The Jazz suffered for a season and a half after letting Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap walk as free agents, but midway through Quin Snyder's first year as head coach, a new Utah team coalesced around a talented starting frontcourt of Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors and Rudy Gobert.
After trading Enes Kanter at the deadline and promoting Gobert in his place, the Jazz were the NBA's top defense by a wide margin in the second half of the season. That success has spurred hope that Utah could return to the playoffs this season. Though the loss of starting point guard Dante Exum to a torn ACL hurts the Jazz's chances of claiming the eighth seed, the future still looks bright in Salt Lake City.
The early stages of the 2014-15 season showed little indication Utah was on the verge of a breakthrough. A nine-game losing streak in late November and early December dropped the Jazz to 5-16, putting them on a 26-win pace. From there through the All-Star break, Utah was nearly a .500 team.
Things really turned around for the Jazz at the All-Star break. The day before the first game of the second half, Kanter was traded to Oklahoma City in a three-team deal that secured Utah a future first-round pick and the rights to German center Tibor Pleiss.
The move made Gobert the team's starting center. With his 7-foot-1 presence alongside versatile defender Favors, teams found the Jazz defense nearly impenetrable the rest of the season. In fact, the gap between Utah and the second-place Memphis Grizzlies after the break was larger than the difference between Memphis and the New Orleans Pelicans, who ranked 18th. The Jazz's defensive improvement was the largest from the first half to the second half by any team since 1996-97, excluding lockout-shortened seasons:
Although Utah's offense was slightly weaker with less floor spacing, its defense powered the Jazz to a 19-10 record after the break with a plus-5.0 point differential, which was the NBA's sixth-best in that span.
Utah entered the summer with the ability to clear max-level cap space and retain its core. Instead of making an aggressive move in free agency, the Jazz front office decided to play things more conservatively to give their young players a chance to grow.
Drafting 12th overall, Utah took Kentucky forward Trey Lyles in the hopes that he can develop into the stretch 4 the team has long coveted as a complement to Favors and Gobert. The Jazz also added a pair of international players whose rights they held -- Pleiss, who will battle for the fourth spot in the frontcourt rotation, and 2013 second-round pick Raul Neto.
The biggest news of Utah's offseason came from across the Atlantic. That's where Exum, playing for the Australian National Team in an exhibition against host Slovenia, went down with a non-contact knee injury after planting on a drive. An MRI confirmed Exum had torn his left ACL, an injury that will likely keep him off the court for the entirety of the 2015-16 season.
How excited are Jazz fans? They packed Energy Solutions Arena in July for summer league games and roared with the sort of enthusiasm typically reserved for a playoff series. Expectations were tempered a bit when Exum tore his ACL in international play, but the Jazz still believe their young and developing core -- one headlined by the frontcourt of Gobert, Favors and Hayward -- is capable of competing for a playoff berth in a cutthroat Western Conference. Remember this: After the All-Star break last season, the Jazz owned the league's best defensive rating, allowing a mere 94.8 points per 100 possessions -- and the nearest competitor (Milwaukee) was a whopping 4.6 points behind.
General manager Dennis Lindsey noted, "After the All-Star break and the trade deadline, the nature of our group and how we defended changed. Our hope, real simply, is that is something that we can build on." Lindsey believes he's got the right coach to take that next step. After leading the Jazz to a 13-win improvement last season, Snyder was voted the Most Influential Person in Utah Sports for 2015 in a poll by the Salt Lake Tribune. -- Chris Forsberg
Projected Real Plus-Minus for starters
Trey Burke, PG: -1.4
Alec Burks, SG: -0.9
Gordon Hayward, SF: +4.0
Derrick Favors, PF: +1.8
Rudy Gobert, C: +2.6
Scouting reports on every player on the Jazz
Using shot data from 2014-15 and projected starters, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry ranks each team's offensive efficiency based on square footage.
Gobert, known primarily for his shot-blocking, operates solely at the basket on offense. The 7-1 Frenchman takes 97 percent of his shots from within 10 feet, the eighth-highest frequency in the league.
Though Hayward is one of just 17 players to project a 16-4-4 line, he struggles from the left-wing 3, shooting a putrid 31 percent from there.
All About The Space: 20th (402 square feet of above-average offense)
To identify players who stretch offenses the most, ESPN Stats & Information created the Kyle Korver Effect -- a metric on a 1-100 scale, factoring in 3PT%, 3-point attempt rate (percentage of total shots that come from 3-point range) and influence on teammate FG%.
Korver Effect: Hayward (77.9), who SCHOENE predicts to shoot 36 percent overall from 3, is one of four Jazz rotation players to project as above average from long range.
Let's rerun that earlier chart of most-improved second-half defenses, this time changing all the figures to be relative to league average (positive being better than average) and see how those improvements held up in the following season for each team.
Answer: Not so well. On average, past defensive turnarounds haven't shown any predictive power. There are a few reasons to expect the Jazz to regress from their second-half performance. Improved 3-point defense was a factor in their improvement, and research has shown teams have little control over opponent 3-point shooting, particularly in small samples. Utah also faced a weaker set of opposing offenses after the break and benefited from Exum replacing the weaker Trey Burke in the lineup, a change that will be reversed after Exum's injury.
So the Jazz probably won't be so dominant defensively this season. Still, if Utah can merely rank in the top 10 on D after finishing 12th overall in 2014-15, an offensive rating that's close to average should be enough to earn the Jazz the eighth seed. The ESPN forecast panel has Utah and the Dallas Mavericks fighting for the last spot in the West playoffs, and RPM-based projections show something similar. If the Jazz's postseason drought doesn't end in 2015-16, the wait doesn't figure to be much longer.
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