Does the NBA need to change the way it operates?

Three thoughts on the week in Jazz basketball from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz fight against the best

It’s holiday time, which means I don’t see friends and family visiting very often. It’s a delight.

As you would expect, I get asked a lot about jazz. In my experience, there are a lot of people who are kind of tuned in, so they want to know what’s going on this year from someone who’s paying close attention.

And it’s a bit of a weird year to sum it up. The Jazz are kind of in contention for the Play-Ins, but mostly trying to keep their top 8 protected pick owed to OKC and prioritizing youth development, but also definitely starting Svi Mykhailiuk and Jusuf Nurkic, and listening a little to trade ideas for Lauri Markkanen, but also mostly not wanting to trade him. In both cases it is a sentence and on reality TV.

They hired a new general manager and scouts, but most of the same people who ran the team before are still there, and the new GM is the son of the old one.

Do they look promising on the court? The games have actually been pretty fun to watch in recent weeks, and coaches around the league are getting praise for their offense and generally playing unselfish basketball, which is a joy. And it’s a good thing he’s fun to watch offensively, as his complete lack of defense ensures he’ll be back on offense in the blink of an eye.

I think the most useful way to sum up the team was on display Monday night: This is a basketball team that can compete with many, even most, teams in the NBA — but it doesn’t stand a chance against the best in the league.

This is how data is collected:

In other words, the Jazz are the worst team in the NBA when they play the best teams in the NBA. Even the Wizards are doing better than the Jazz against the league’s top 10. The Jazz have surprising wins against these teams, but overall, most of those games haven’t been as close as we saw on Monday.

Against the other 20 teams? They’re not great or anything, but they’re competitive, middle of the pack. Their offense works really, really well against bad teams.

That’s a barrier the Jazz faced early in the Quin Snyder era, too: They struggled against teams that took them seriously. However, this team was able to turn it around when Rudy Gobert emerged and Gordon Hayward developed. (Later on, Donovan Mitchell also really helped.)

2. One Jazz player is the best in the league at something

Basketball Reference is apparently the second best website in the world – behind only sltrib.com. One thing they do that I really like is bold when a player is the league leader in a certain stat. For example, you can see well from it Player page of Nikola Jokic that he leads the league in rebounds and assists.

There is only one bold number Jazz team page:

It’s Jusuf Nurkic’s defensive rebounding percentage! Nurk grabs 31.2% of available defensive rebounds when he’s out on the floor.

That puts him above Andre Drummond, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jokic and all the other great rebounders. (Shout out to Atlanta’s Jalen Johnson, who ranks sixth in the league in defensive rebounding percentage and grabs more rebounds than Rudy Gobert and nearly every other NBA center despite being much shorter.)

We’ve written about Nurkic’s rebounding before, but now we have more data on how he’s impacting the team overall. Also, this chart from PBPStats.com is in Christmas colors.

The Jazz’s shooting is much worse with Nurkic in the game and their turnovers are increasing. (That makes sense, since he’s third in the league among centers in turnovers.) However, their defensive rebounding is getting much better, and teams are sending significantly less to the line.

Making some 3-point adjustment to shooting luck (which you can find here), the Jazz’s overall numbers improve and are about the same when Nurkic is on the floor vs. when it isn’t.

3. Changing the way the game is conducted

This may be the defining NBA YouTube video of the season.

Ben Taylor on his Thinking Basketball YouTube channel has done some work to understand why the offense is back this year. This 20-minute video explains the different ways the game is run in favor of the offense in 2025 – and why it’s so hard for defenses to stop. In general, I think it’s not like the players aren’t trying. That’s because the way the game is run now, they’re not really allowed to try.

While Taylor brings in clips of various kinds of changes (yes, including travel), the most notable topic for me was his discussion of how basketball is run. Now attacking players can simply bully defenders – even if the defenders have contact right in the chest.

The best part of the video is at the 9 minute mark when Taylor shows examples of how differently blocks and hubs were called 15 years ago compared to today. Kevin Durant lunges at Ronnie Brewer in one clip and charges are sure to be filed.

As it should be.

In fact, I think the standard and consistency in NBA refereeing is much, much higher than it was back then. It’s just that the league authority has instructed its officials in such a way that it is almost impossible to play a legal defense. It was discouraging to see NBA points of emphasis are coming out so the defense cannot effectively guard direct drives, for example.

Playoff basketball is better in part because the officials are starting to allow more defense. Olympic basketball is even better for the same reason. This is what basketball fans want to see no 152-150 score.

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