Remember when they used to have those "future" rankings (and I think we were at or near the top at first, with a young Oden, Roy and Aldridge)? Well, right now you'd have to go with the Jazz. Their current form is better than ours and their oldest major player is probably Derek Favors, who has finally become the player he was supposed to be. Meanwhile Hayward is borderline All-Star and Dante Exum and Rudy Gobert look like stars of the future. They must have about the youngest rotation of any halfway decent team. I'm kind of envious. The best I can hope for is that Batum will get to Gobert and we'll sign him away like we did with Wesley and tried to do with Millsap...
Their strength is their defense, which is unusual for such a young team. Over the last ten games they've held teams under 87ppg. That's amazing in this day and age. Probably offloading the defensively challenged Kanter to free up minutes for Gobert is the main reason for the defensive leap, but it's pretty startling. They haven't had a defensive center like Gobert since Mark Eaton. Gobert has made such a huge leap - he's averaging 15 rpg over that span! Why didn't we draft him again?
Love the Utah core, but to say Exum has future star written all over him is putting the cart way ahead of the horse. His defense is solid for a rookie, but his offensive game is abysmal. Not only is his jump shot broke, but he doesn't look to attack the rim much either. Luckily for them Trey Burke has been picking up the slack scoring the ball off the bench at the PG position.
Sure the Jazz have a nice looking roster for the future but I dont' think they have a real shot at the playoffs for another 3 years, the west is just to stacked and the only two teams posed to fall off due to age are Dallas and SA.
Them = good. Us = bad. Or more accurately: them = not terrible, us = less not terrible Or, if we're talking Plato's forms, they participate more in the form of the good.
Them = lottery Us = Home court in the west Oh cool, they have a couple scrubby foreigners you like.... La dee fricken da.
The Jazz have a high ceiling I agree and they could be a real dangerous team. However they could also fall off a cliff.. All those young players have to continue to play together and grow together.. Not look for their own $$. If that young core starts looking for their own. The Jazz could go from a bright future to no future at all. No one could really blame those young men looking to get paid rather than win games either.
Hayward, Favors and Burks are already signed into long term contracts. Gobert has two more on his rookie scale and at least one more on a QU (He's going to get extended though anyways). Exum has 3+ years left on his rookie scale. Their core is locked in for the next 3-4 years at least.
