SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Jazz center Kelly Olynyk took the podium in the bowels of Vivint Arena, about 45 minutes after Memphis’ Desmond Bane slipped and fell on a final possession that sealed a 124-123 win for Utah. The hat covering his long hair was crisp white, with the wording in neon letters. He fiddled with it before taking questions from reporters. Finally, he turned it to the back.
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“Saturday night is for the boys,” is what the neon letters read out front.
On Saturday night, the Jazz improbably ran their record to 5-2 on the young season, with four of those five wins coming over the Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Pelicans and now Grizzlies. All playoff teams with designs on a postseason run, and maybe a championship run.
The Utah Jazz have been fun, but they also have been resilient. They haven’t succumbed to a difficult schedule. Saturday was their third game in four nights. It was the second night of a back-to-back. There was no Mike Conley. There was no Rudy Gay, Walker Kessler or Simone Fontecchio. It seemingly doesn’t matter who is available from night to night. New head coach Will Hardy is making it all work.
“We’re just going out there and playing basketball,” Olynyk said.
Through seven games, trends are starting to take shape and habits are beginning to form. Last season? Those were bad habits, even in the wins. Everyone saw it, and eventually those bad habits took down an era of Utah basketball.
This season, the Jazz are putting together one of the best offenses in the NBA and doing so with a bunch of role players everyone has seemingly forgotten. They are closing games without a natural closer, something that goes against almost all conventional thinking in this league. And they are running an equal-opportunity offense that’s difficult to prepare for in the throes of a regular season.
How are they doing this? And how are they consistently putting pressure on opposing teams and defenses.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who are underrated, and we are playing for each other,” Utah guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker said. “We don’t care who takes the shot, as long as it’s a good shot.”
The Jazz have pieces that fit together, which goes further than one might think. And a lot of that is making them difficult to defend. Hardy is running a five-out offense that relies on a lot of read and react. Olynyk is Utah’s first center since Mehmet Okur who’s proficient from 3-point range, and his presence gives the offense maximum spacing. With Olynyk at center, and Lauri Markkanen at power forward, the Jazz have the ability to stretch teams out to the perimeter.
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Utah combines that duo’s shooting with guards who get downhill and can touch the paint off the dribble and put pressure on the rim. This is where Conley, Collin Sexton and Jordan Clarkson come in. All three are very good off the dribble, and are good pick-and-roll players. With teams having to guard the big men outside of the paint and above the 3-point line, the guards are getting into the lane almost any time they want.
“When we have Lauri and Kelly on the floor together, they have to put their center on somebody,” Hardy said. “And that gives our guards more spacing. We’re continuing to learn and to adjust as we go. When I look at our roster, I see a lot of guys who can do a lot of things. But I don’t see a lot of isolation players. So, we want to involve multiple people, and we want to do the things that play to the strengths of our roster.”
Adjustment is a key word here, because Hardy has made several adjustments on the fly to the personnel that he has on the floor. Take Saturday night, for example. With Conley resting on the back-to-back, Sexton played 30 minutes for his first time in a Jazz uniform.
But Hardy stressed that Sexton does it differently than Conley. Conley is more of a floor general and a game manager. He’s a master at getting people in the right places at the right times and running the offense. Sexton is much more of a scorer and someone who creates his own offense. Hardy wants Sexton to play to what he does best, so he’s empowered that. He’s not tasking Sexton with worrying about running the offense. And the young guard responded with 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting from the field.
When this team was in the final stages of being put together, the front office suspected scoring wouldn’t be an issue. The surprise is that the Jazz are playing so well offensively in the game’s closing minutes. Because closing minutes are for the star-level players, and the Jazz obviously don’t have one of those at the moment.
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Utah’s closed better than its opponent in multiple games to this point, with different guys stepping up for money shots. In the season-opener against Denver, it was Sexton, with his nickname “Young Bull,” revving past Nikola Jokić for the back-breaking score. Two nights later, it was Markkanen posting up a smaller Austin Rivers in the late stretches of overtime for the most important shot of the game. Two nights after that, Olynyk hit a spinning game-winning finger roll stumbling down the lane against the Pelicans. On Saturday night, it was Malik Beasley knocking home a 3 to give the Jazz a four-point lead and doing a shimmy while the crowd celebrated.
🎯 Malik Beasley knocks down a HUGE triple with 22.5 remaining in Q4!
Utah leads by 4 late on the NBA Apphttps://t.co/1pomQZMAZK pic.twitter.com/9D2hNDJLi0
— NBA (@NBA) October 30, 2022
The one constant for the Jazz has been Clarkson. He’s been magnificent offensively in the first month of the season, but not in the way he had been in the past. Yes, he’s scoring at his normal clip. But he’s playmaking for others, particularly down the stretch of games, in a way he’s never done in his career. This is his first extended stint as a starter since his second year in the league in 2015-16, and he’s taking full advantage of it. He’s been the guy with the ball in his hands when games have been on the line.
“He’s a professional scorer,” Alexander-Walker said. “I think he’s one of the most underrated players that we have in our game. He’s been leading the young guys and he’s adding to what he does well.”
Most importantly, the Jazz have been unpredictable. They have closed with six different lineups in seven games. They are a team where everyone handles the ball, and the depth of the bench has been better than anticipated. Alexander-Walker had his best game in a Jazz uniform on Saturday, scoring 11 points and defending as well as he has all season. Rookie Ochai Agbaji scored seven points in 17 minutes. It feels like the Jazz are finding a new hero on almost every night.
Now, for the disclaimer that’s coming with almost every one of these stories: it remains to be seen how long this can continue. Utah has a difficult schedule ahead, with 10 sets of back-to-backs before the All-Star break. They have playoff team after playoff team on the horizon, and the schedule is road heavy.
But, the whirling dervish of a ride has been real so far and the Jazz are one of the feel-good stories of the NBA’s early season.
(Photo of Kelly Olynyk: Melissa Majchrzak / NBAE via Getty Images)
Tony Jones is a Staff Writer at The Athletic covering the Utah Jazz and the NBA. A native of the East Coast and a journalism brat as a child, he has an addiction to hip-hop music and pickup basketball, and his Twitter page has been used for occasional debates concerning Biggie and Tupac. Follow Tony on Twitter @Tjonesonthenba
