The Athletic thinks the Utah Jazz are heading in the same direction as the Detroit Pistons – The J Notes

The Utah Jazz are starting to lose badly, and the Athletics’ Tony Jones believes

this could be the start of a bad decline. The Jazz aren’t a good team, in part due to a bad combination of players, some of whom aren’t putting in the effort needed to win. Due to this, the team has struggled to look competitive at times, and it culminated with a 50-point loss to the Dallas Mavericks.

It triggered a pretty brutal response from head coach Will Hardy, and Jones believes that if the Jazz doesn’t straighten things out, the team will fall into a death spiral of sorts, just like the Detroit Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs. A bold and wild theory but one that may hold some truth.

In the article, Jones cites Kelly Olynyk who talks about keeping the competition high, with Jones later going on to say that losing affects teams in a way that it could take years to recover from. And he’s not wrong. The Jazz got bounced by 50 points by the Dallas Mavericks, one of the ugliest and worst losses in the team’s history, a team that doesn’t have a history of losing that much.

And while it’d be so easy to write a think-piece rebutting Jones’ beliefs, he isn’t wrong, in the least. The team is heading that same way, in part due to head coach Will Hardy’s inability to make tough calls, like benching players who are just flat-out hurting the team. The Jazz area is in a spot where they’re looking to boast the trade value of several veterans, and in doing so, are outright harming their team in the process.

It’s that type of mentality that is holding the Jazz back, with the front office trying to have their cake and eat it too. They made the decision to try and compete with players who were punching above their metaphorical weight classes, and it didn’t work out. But instead of admitting that some guys are better off not helping the team, they’re holding onto hope that long-established players change up who they are.

There’s little doubt in my mind that the team will look a lot better as we head into February and March but by the the time we get there, the season will long be over for the Jazz, as they can’t possibly endure the next month of action and expect any more than double the wins they currently have now. The idea of this squad winning 40+ games and making the playoffs is outright dead and gone. Now, we’re just hoping that the season doesn’t hinder the future of the young core the team will look to build around.