Could the Utah Jazz Be Golden State's Kryptonite?

The Golden State Warriors winning the 2016-17 NBA title may be the closest thing professional sports has ever had to "a sure thing." Depending on your personal rankings, they could have as many as four of the world's ten best players, and a highly competent supporting cast that's already proven a willingness to sacrifice for the greater good. Last year, the Warriors were a coast-consuming tidal wave. With Kevin Durant on the roster, the tidal wave is made of lava.

Now the big question is: Can any team spare us from a season-long coronation? There are a number of answers, none of them quite persuasive, but perhaps the most interesting is a team in a peewee-sized television market that hasn't made the playoffs since 2012, and doesn't boast any top-15 players. The Utah Jazz seem like a long shot to slay the Warriors, but so does everyone else. After a summer of brilliant personnel moves that enhance well-established on-court strengths and broaden the team's attack, these Jazz may be as convincing a long shot as we've got.

Utah is skilled and agile on the perimeter, with a flexible bench that should allow head coach Quin Snyder's imagination to run wild. They're big enough to turn the paint into a steel cage match and deep enough to go small and switch everything on the outside. Last year's team was sparky and intermittently scary, and they've kept their core intact while adding George Hill, Joe Johnson, and Boris Diaw—savvy veterans with real playoff experience who fill areas of need. And players like Trey Lyles, Rodney Hood, and Dante Exum are still young enough to enjoy meaningful improvement; fans far from Salt Lake City will have fun watching them grow.

Any team that wants to compete with the Warriors must be comfortable operating in slow motion. Points are important, but it's even more critical to maintain efficiency by generating solid looks in half-court sets that then allow plenty of time to get back in transition. The Jazz were the NBA's slowest team last year, and that was by design. They averaged more passes than everybody else but were 27th in assist opportunities. Few teams cut more or leaned as heavily on dribble hand-offs. Injuries, turnovers, and a general lack of talent and athleticism prevented Utah from becoming a legitimate threat, but when they're at Full Squad, the Jazz have a system that makes sense and enough talent to make it work.

On defense, Utah was an impenetrable fortress after the 2014-15 All-Star game, allowing 94.8 points per 100 possessions during this stretch; the gap between them and the second-place Milwaukee Bucks was about the same as the Bucks and the 20th-ranked Detroit Pistons. Even with the injuries that shredded their depth chart, the Jazz still cobbled together a top-ten defense last season. They held opponents to 1.08 points per possession in transition—good for tenth best in the league.

These are all necessary numbers for any team trying to match up against Golden State. Any opponent that tries to punish the Warriors' small, switch-happy units must also dominate the boards and have at least one back-to-the-basket offensive threat who can do damage on the block. The Jazz more than fit that bill. They finished fourth in offensive rebound rate and seventh in defensive rebound rate last season, and when Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors shared the floor (882 minutes stretched out over 49 games), Utah rebounded better than every team except the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Even though, as a team, they were allergic to operating with their backs to the basket last season, Favors is an increasingly effective post-up weapon and Diaw was one of the league's very best in those situations, per Synergy. A unit comprising Hill, Hood, Gordon Hayward, Diaw, and Favors can switch every screen, produce decent looks on the perimeter, and hold their own on the glass. Johnson was also ridiculously efficient posting up in Miami last season, albeit in a small sample size.

That top-to-bottom size advantage—the players above go 6'3", 6'8", 6'8", 6'8", 6'8", and 6'10", respectively—creates various opportunities in some areas of the game, but can the Jazz keep the Warriors from raining threes if they refuse to downsize? Can they control tempo and protect the rim and gobble up every rebound in sight?

The test there is Gobert, a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate who already has established himself as one of the sport's great paint protectors. It's tough to say whether he can stay on the floor if the Warriors play Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Durant, and Draymond Green at the same time, but while he isn't the most confident defender in space, he can stay in front of guards and contest shots without leaving his feet. Maybe that won't work against a unit that features five above-average-to-historically-great outside shooters, but do you have any better ideas?

Gobert has both the foot speed and the intelligence to read and react to what offenses want to do. In the play below, watch him sniff out Miami's rendition of San Antonio's infamous "Hammer" set. Instead of getting sucked in to thwart Goran Dragic's drive, Gobert quickly identifies the play and fights through Dwyane Wade's back pick before sprinting over to the weak-side corner where his man, Chris Bosh, is open for a three. Bosh missed the shot.

But plays like this aren't a given. Gobert doesn't have Tim Duncan's basketball IQ, and even the slightest hesitation can be fatal against a Steph Curry high pick-and-roll.

The supporting cast around Gobert will help. Hill is a fluid defender who can bother pull-up attempts after fighting over screens. A healthy Exum will also give the Jazz a bit more athleticism and length on the perimeter. This would be enough to stymie any team, even the Warriors. But on the other end, Golden State will be perfectly fine if Gobert tries to post them up, because he isn't skilled enough to draw a double team and he turns it over far too often.

Favors is a better post-up option, if we're gaming out the Dubs–Jazz match-up, and he's also long, smart, and fast enough to get his hands on just about everything when guarding pick-and-rolls. So can these two bigs play together when the Warriors go small? We don't really know because we haven't really seen it, but in 52 minutes of action last season the Jazz allowed a discouraging 106.2 points per 100 possessions when Gobert and Favors shared the floor against Golden State.

Fortunately, Snyder has several options should those two struggle to cover all that real estate. Right now, Utah may be the deepest team in the league; they have multiple ball-handlers who can create their own shot or set up a teammate for a spot-up three. Johnson, Hill, Hood, Alec Burks, and Hayward can thrive on either end of that transaction. What happens if they all play at the same time?

It's not a rhetorical question, and the answer is that Golden State would probably just shrug and do their thing. The only team that had much success going small against them last season did so with Durant at power forward. The Warriors erased that threat by giving him a two-year maximum contract. Again: this is going to be a very hard team to beat.

But Utah's roster should still be able to keep its head above water, even against these Warriors. They probably won't be the second-best team in the West next year, at least not yet. But come next spring, they may be our best hope of giving Golden State a migraine.

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