The Jazz have found their offensive rhythm

It’s a cruel fate for a franchise to spend four years growing organically, establishing an identity and reaching the precipice of contention, only for its cornerstone to walk in free agency. It’s downright unfair for that team to lose its remaining star player for a month, leaving an otherwise unremarkable roster to tread water in a supremely deep conference.

But somehow, the Utah Jazz have managed. Last year’s team ranked 12th in offense and third in defense with Gordon Hayward leading its attack and Rudy Gobert anchoring its defense. Now Hayward is gone while Gobert only just returned from an injury that cost him 11 games. Smart, versatile defenders have allowed the Jazz to maintain a top-six defense, even without Gobert. More surprising has been their production at the other end of the floor, where they’ve thus far ground out an above-average offense despite lacking a clear go-to option.

A clear line of delineation can be drawn between Utah’s first 16 games and its last nine. The Jazz stumbled out of the gate, struggling to find their footing while adjusting to new personnel. The transformation that has occurred in the time since has rendered the Jazz almost unrecognizable from the team that sputtered to a 6-10 start. Since Nov. 18, they’ve flipped a miserable turnover rate into one of the league’s best and rank in the top three in offensive and net rating. Their nearly 43 percent mark from 3-point range during that span is likely unsustainable, but the manner in which they’ve produced those shots feels endurable.

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Without a Hayward-level offensive creator, the Jazz generate offensive leverage through constant motion, clever decision-making and precise timing. It isn’t so simple as routing the offense through your best player via isolation or pick-and-roll; Utah doesn’t have that player on its roster. Instead, Quin Snyder builds advantages into his sets with player and ball movement. Players receive the ball in motion, ready to attack an already off-balance defense. The Jazz use dribble handoffs more than nearly every team in the NBA. They’ll run three or four in a matter or seconds, keeping the defense in constant motion:

Defenses would rather watch their opponents settle for the first available shot than stay mentally and physically engaged for the entirely of the shot clock. The longer a team has to defend, the more likely it becomes that a breakdown will occur. Utah, who ranks 27th in pace, knows this better than anyone. The Jazz will patiently dissect a defense deep into the shot clock until it surrenders something easy. When the first option isn’t available, collective intelligence and unselfishness take over. If an initial action doesn’t yield a shot, an improvised backdoor cut or pick-and-roll might:

For a team like the Warriors, who lead the NBA in assists, ball movement is superfluous to overwhelming talent. For the Jazz, it is the very component on which the offense subsists. If the ball stops moving, so too does the offense. Utah ranks second in the NBA in passes per game and just 25th in isolations. Only five teams average less time per touch. Every swing of the ball presents a choice: shoot, pass or dribble. Make that decision quick enough, and the defense gets into scramble mode. String three or four good decisions together, and open shots materialize:

While the Jazz may lack elite shot creation, they abound with shot makers. They rank sixth in the league in spot-up efficiency and shoot 46 percent from the corners. Utah still has capable individual threats. Rodney Hood is taking — and making — more triples than ever and excels in isolations and pick-and-rolls. Ricky Rubio has long been a premier setup man while Joe Ingles has become one of the league’s best 3-point shooters and most delightfully quirky offensive players. Donovan Mitchell is starting to pop as a scorer and distributor; it’s no coincidence that his best stretch of the season has aligned with the team’s newfound success.

They’re still figuring out how to maximize Rubio in a more pass-heavy system. The Jazz have been better with him off the floor, and he’s cooled significantly after a blistering start. They’ve also been better without Gobert, though that’s less an indictment of his value and more a testament to the benefits of playing small and Utah’s offensive renaissance. The Jazz have walloped teams with just one big on the court. Jonas Jerebko and Thabo Sefolosha have thrived at the four, and should continue to see minutes there as Joe Johnson recovers from a wrist injury.

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Snyder has gone back to a bigger starting lineup, but still heavily features small lineups by staggering Favors and Gobert, who seldom share the floor outside the start of each half. The very threat of Gobert surrounded by four outside threats should invigorate Utah’s hopes of maintaining an efficient offense as he eases back into the fold. The Jazz are already greater than the sum of their parts, and those parts become stronger with each passing game.