Utah Jazz — The Mike Conley of Old

A ton of things have to break right for the Utah Jazz to take the crown. On top of already being the weakest team of the ten contenders in this series, Bojan Bogdanovic is receiving season ending wrist surgery.

Donovan Mitchell, despite putting up solid numbers in the post-season, has not shot efficiently, and Rudy Gobert’s defense is fairly ineffective in a lot of situations when teams game plan for it. Those puts added pressure on other areas for the Jazz.

The one thing the Jazz have to be able to count on is Mike Conley. This is the reason they brought him in this past off-season. The Jazz, and Quin Snyder were tired of Mitchell being the only guy capable of creating his own shot, because it lead to a lot of ineffective possessions.

Utah brought in two guys capable of it, and one, in Bogdanovic is out for the rest of the year, and the other, in Conley, has been gone for the entirety of the year to date. Not due to injury, or at least, not that we are aware of.

It’s one of the more confusing storylines to date. The Jazz have been mounds more successful when Conley doesn’t suit up. They have a 17-6 record when Conley is inactive, including a 10 game winning streak mid-season.

This will be all forgotten if Conley has a good season, and helps lead the Jazz to a deep playoff run.

The last time Conley was in the playoffs was 2017, where he averaged 24.7 points per game, and seven assists per game. Compare that to this regular season where he is putting up one of his lowest point and assist totals of his career, off fairly low efficiencies.

It will be an uphill battle for the Jazz to survive three rounds of the West, but if they are to do it, it has to start with a much more effective version of Mike Conley than we’ve seen of him in a Jazz uniform.