Playoff battles

The NBA Playoffs start this week, and the Utah Jazz will be part of it, something I wouldn't have believed at the beginning of the season. Back then, the youth of the Jazz roster and the inexperience of the coach, coupled with the lack of 3-point shooters, made me think the team was at least a year away from competing. After getting blown out in the first two games of the season I worried that even my modest expectations were too high, and that the Jazz might even be the worst team in the league.

But they righted the ship quickly, and played especially well after the All Star break. Second-year player Gordon Hayward was extremely timid at the beginning of the year, but changed seemingly overnight into an aggressive finisher at the basket and looks like a future 20 points-per-game guy. Rookie Alec Burks blossomed quickly and is probably already the best penetrator the Jazz have had in the 20+ years I've watched them, and is definitely my favorite player on the team. Devin Harris, who came to Utah in last year's Deron Williams trade, is still useless on defense but finally seems to be trying on offense. And all of those guys are shooting much better from the outside than I thought they were capable of.

Utah is not a great defensive team, but they've become very dangerous on offense. I don't think Tyrone Corbin is a great strategic coach, but his players seem to really like him (except Raja Bell, who is washed up and hopefully won't average more than 10 minutes per game in the postseason) and play hard for him, which may be even more important. I think they can surprise some people.

Since they've already exceeded my expectations, I don't really care how well they do in the playoffs. Well,  I wouldn't care--but they're playing the San Antonio Spurs in the first round. Most Jazz fans would name the Lakers as their most hated rival, but the Spurs are the team I dislike most in all of professional sports. My animosity is based on a combination of smugness, flopping, predictability, and (perhaps most of all) dominance against my favorite team. Even though nobody expects the Jazz to win the series (including me), I will be really bummed out if San Antonio is victorious.

There are some parallels between this playoff scenario and the story of Zeniff, covered in this week's Sunday School lesson. Zeniff was overzealous to return to the land of his fathers' inheritance, just like the Jazz wanted to return to the playoffs, where the franchise made a regular home in years past. Utah beat San Antonio once this year, but the Spurs rested their three best players, perhaps giving the Jazz a false sense of security, just like the Lamanites did to Zeniff's people. To defend his people, Zeniff even armed his young men (Mosiah 10:9); four players age 22 or younger log significant minutes for Utah. After Zeniff's son Noah became king, his guards were insufficient to defeat the Lamanites (Mosiah 11:17); the strength of the Jazz is definitely their frontcourt, not their guard play. In later chapters, the Lamanite king is found lying among the dead on the battlefield, but he's ok--sounds like a Ginobili-esque flop to me! The concubines and wife stealing that happened under Noah's reign is more of a Spurs thing, but it's admittedly not a perfect analogy.

The good news for Jazz fans is that Zeniff's people ultimately triumphed over the evil Lamanites/Spurs. The bad news: it took about three generations for it to happen. I'm hoping Utah can bring their fans a happy ending much sooner than that. Go Jazz!