Hardwood Paroxysm’s favorite historical NBA teams

Long Live the 2007-08 Utah Jazz

By Miles Wray (@mileswray)

See, when you just read that, that “Long Live the 2007-08 Utah Jazz,” you instinctively thought that this was some sort of joke, a whimsical appreciation of a lovable losing team. Now, I love losing teams as much as the next dude, and I love whimsical appreciations of lovable losing teams as well. But oh boy this is no losing team.

You thought that the 2007-08 Utah Jazz were bad because, at this moment, just about every member of that roster has gone on to earn reputations as terrible basketball players — some of them have earned it, some of them haven’t. Deron Williams is known for playing on one of the least cost-efficient contracts in the league. Carlos Boozer was known that way as well, until he was amnestied earlier this summer by the Chicago Bulls. Gordan Giricek and Mehmet Okur disappeared back to Europe well before their age required them to do so. Backup bigs Jarron Collins and Kyrylo Fesenko never played the game with shall we say smoothness. C.J. Miles is all right. Ronnie Brewer and Ronnie Price have been thanklessly tossed around the league as salary ballast. Only Kyle Korver and Paul Millsap — 20 MPG reserves on this team, starters on the present edition of the Atlanta Hawks — look good these days.

But damn, this team was designed with elegance that analytics have rarely been able to replicate, a team that played with cosmopolitan flair and flash underneath the massive, bent nose and farm wisdom of Jerry Sloan. We’ll start with this: these Utah Jazz had an Offensive Rating of 113.8.

That’s the 21st-most efficient offense of all-time. Let’s remove the white noise of defense-free eras of the Association: these Jazz had the 5th-most efficient offense in this century. (And three of the four teams above them were led by Steve Nash and Mike D’Antoni.) You know those beautiful San Antonio Spurs, 2013-14’s champions that flabbergasted us all with their fluid execution and visionary offensive scheme? They had a 110.5 Offensive Rating, tied for 49th-best in this century.

Those Jazz meant business.

The key was Okur, the center, who shot a team-leading 294 3-point attempts and made 38.8% of them (a higher percentage than Korver managed that year). With opposing centers cleared out of the key, the imaginative passer Williams fed endless passes to the imaginative cutters Kirilenko and Brewer. Yeah, Brewer has a funny-lookin’ jump-shot. He also attempted 59% of his field goals within three feet of the basket, constantly sending home uncontested dunks behind a flummoxed defense. And oh my, the balance. Five different players averaged double digit points; eight players averaged more than eight points per game.

But this was unquestionably Williams’ team. At the time, it was something of a neck-and-neck situation to see who would have the more prosperous career, himself or Chris Paul. A silly question now, but it was a photo-finish at the time. What made it even more difficult to decipher was that Williams would always out-size and out-muscle Paul when they matched up head-to-head. Even all these years later, Williams’ teams still dominate the match-up.

In the end, though, this was the ultimate underdog team. Playing from a city smaller than Modesto, California or Des Moines, Iowa, out of the 15 members of the roster that year, one was undrafted and nine were second-round picks (and also one of the first-rounders was Morris Almond). When they succumbed to the Lakers, 4-2, in the second round — no explanation here other than the better team won — the world gleefully rubbed their hands together in anticipation of the eventual Lakers-Celtics final as if they themselves were on payroll in the NBA’s PR department. As the Lakers advanced, no tears were shed that Goliath had beaten David. The 2007-08 Utah Jazz just missed the Twitter Era by that much.