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Oct 10, 2023

Jazz: 10 greatest teams in franchise history, ranked

Nearly 50 years into their history, the Utah Jazz are still yet to achieve the ultimate success. But while they've fallen short of an NBA championship, they've still boasted plenty of great players

Nearly 50 years into their history, the Utah Jazz are still yet to achieve the ultimate success. But while they've fallen short of an NBA championship, they've still boasted plenty of great players and enjoyed a number of very good seasons over the course of their existence.

With their 1990s team headlined by John Stockton and Karl Malone a major feature of the list, these are the ten greatest Jazz teams in franchise history, ranked.

After four consecutive years of finishing fifth or sixth in the Western Conference, the Jazz took a big step forward in 2020-21, winning 52 games to finish on top of the West. It wasn't the most talented team in the world, but with Donovan Mitchell averaging over 26 points per game, Rudy Gobert winning Defensive Player of the Year, and an experienced group around them which included Joe Ingles, Mike Conley and Bojan Bogdanovic, they did a whole lot right. Unfortunately, after beating the Memphis Grizzlies in five games in the First Round of the playoffs, their season came to a premature end in six games at the hands of the Los Angeles Clippers.

The Jazz entered this season on the back of a Conference Finals appearance the year prior, and bore hopes of a repeat and then some with Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer leading the charge. They won 54 games during the regular season – three more than the season prior – and once again finished fourth in the West, which saw them match up against the Houston Rockets in the First Round of the NBA Playoffs. They won that in six, but a Conference Semis series against the Los Angeles Lakers proved too much for them and they went down in six.

After a highly competitive albeit ultimately disappointing decade, the Jazz went into the 1999-00 season with Karl Malone and John Stockton still at the helm, but at 36 and 37 respectively they were certainly no spring chickens. Joined by a 36-year-old Jeff Hornacek and the 35-year-old Armen Gilliam and Olden Polynice, this was a team with, to put it kindly, plenty of experience. Malone was still humming along having won the MVP the year prior, but Stockton was past his best. Still, the team racked up a solid 55 wins to finish second in the West, but could only make it to the Conference Semis before being knocked out 4-1 by the Trail Blazers.

The 1994-95 incarnation of the Jazz could very easily have been a lot higher. Led by Stockton and Malone and with the likes of Hornacek and David Benoit ably assisting, this team proved to be extremely difficult to stop during the regular season, en route to a 60-win season which earned them the three seed. Unfortunately for them, that meant they matched up against Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets. Olajuwon set the tone for the series with 45 points in Game 1, which he backed up with 30-point double-doubles in Games 3 and 5, while Clyde Drexler chipped in with 41-9-6 in Game 4, and the Rockets earned themselves a 3-2 series win against a side which had been so impressive all season.

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After three consecutive seasons outside of the playoffs, the Jazz returned to the postseason in 2006-07 on the back of 51 regular season wins. A well-balanced team, the Jazz had five players average between 10 and 21 points during the regular season, with Deron Williams running the show at point and also averaging 9.3 assists per game. They finished fourth in the West and subsequently went on an impressive playoff run which saw them beat the Rockets in seven games and then the Warriors in five to make their way to the Conference Finals. Once there, however, they were no match for the Spurs, who made light work of the Jazz in five games.

The Jazz entered the 1991-92 season having finished in the top six in the Western Conference in eight consecutive seasons, but having not once made it past the Conference Semifinals in that time. At long last, that would change this season. Both Karl and Jeff Malone were firing on all cylinders while John Stockton was dishing out dimes like he was shelling peas, and with him averaging 13.6 assists and Karl Malone 29.1 points in the playoffs they at long last made their way to the final two in the West. But that was as far as they got, with the Trail Blazers ending their season in a six-game series.

A couple of years down the track and after another disappointing early exit the year prior, the Malone-Stockton duo once again led the Jazz to a 50+ win season and a Conference Finals series. This time around it was Hornacek playing third fiddle instead of Jeff Malone, but the end result was the same. Olajuwon again proved their undoing, scoring 72 points in the first two games of the series to open up a 2-0 series lead from which the Jazz would never recover. Their season ended in a five-game series.

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DJ Foster · 1 week ago

DJ Foster · 1 week ago

Stockton and Malone had brought the Jazz plenty of joy to this point in time, but they hadn't yet been able to overcome the absolute best of the best, and with each of them well into their 30s they were each a lot closer to the end of their careers than the start. But neither of them was quite ready for Father Time to slow them down. The Jazz won 55 games that year, but the question was always going to be whether their star duo could lead them out of the Western Conference for the first time. They couldn't, but this was as close as they had got to this point in time. After a disastrous 30-point loss in the Conference Finals opener against the Supersonics, the Jazz went down 3-1 in the best-of-seven series. Game 5 went to overtime, and the Jazz prevailed by three points to keep their season alive before coming out and winning Game 6 by 35 points. Unfortunately, however, that wasn't a sign of things to come. In a thrilling Game 7 they fell heartbreakingly short, with 22 points and seven assists to each of Malone and Stockton not enough to prevent a four-point loss.

At this point in time, it was beginning to feel inevitable that Stockton and Malone would end their careers without a title, and potentially without even an NBA Finals career. But after the heartbreak of the year prior, the two stars, now in their mid-30s, took things up a notch in 1996-97. They made their intentions clear with an outstanding regular season which saw them win 64 games, with Malone capping it off with an MVP victory, and once in the NBA Playoffs they proved this was the best version of this team to date. They knocked off the Clippers 3-0, then the Lakers 4-1 and finally the Rockets 4-2 to at long last make their way into the NBA Finals. Unfortunately, waiting for them was Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. The Jazz performed admirably against their dynastic opponents and at one stage had the series squared at 2-2, but Jordan's ineffable nature helped lead his Bulls to two marginal victories with the season on the line to win the series in six.

The deja vu that the Jazz must have felt this season is hard to imagine. Again, Malone and Stockton led the charge. Again, they won over 60 games in the regular season to lock away the first seed in the West. Again, they worked their way through all their Western Conference opponents, this time in increasingly dominant fashion, with a 3-2 First Round win over the Rockets, a 4-1 Conference Semis win over the Spurs and a sweep of the Lakers in the Conference Finals. And again, they came up against Michael Jordan, this time in what would be his last season with the team for which he had won, to that point, five championships. This time around the Jazz won Game 1, but three consecutive wins to the Bulls put their backs against the wall. They bounced back to take it to 3-2 and for a time looked set to win Game 6, before they fell victim to perhaps the most famous shot in NBA history – Jordan's last for the Bulls, which gave them a one-point lead which they wouldn't relinquish and ensured the greatest ever team the Jazz had put on a floor would again fall agonizingly short of an NBA championship.