Jazz’s Star Trio Stands Out, But Who Can Make the Megastar Leap?

Gobert and Mitchell and the newly arrived Conley are a rare NBA commodity: a combination of three top-25 players. (Game Still)

For the last dozen or so NBA seasons, the contender class has been determined by Big Threes. Star trios –and in some cases quartets — won titles for Boston, Miami, San Antonio and Golden State during what could be described as the superteam era in the world’s best basketball league.

This summer, though, the league’s top stars voted with their feet to bring that era to a close. When Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant and others chose their new basketball homes, they opted for situations where they’d toil with a single other superstar. The time for Big Threes may have passed in the NBA.

Well, almost.

The Utah Jazz like to zig while the rest of the league zags. For a while it was dual bigs in a league of small ball, or lineups with multiple non-shooters in the time of pace-and-space ball. Now, due to a well-timed acquistion of a big-time player in Mike Conley, Quin Snyder’s club once again gets to be the exception to a league-wide trend: they have a legit Big Three.

Conley joins All-NBA center Rudy Gobert and rising star Donovan Mitchell as bona fide elites in an NBA where suddenly the star class is more spread out than it has been since the early days of Shaq and Kobe. 

That Utah finally assembled its own Big Three right as others around the league were dissolved could become a competitive advantage for the Jazz once everybody clicks in. In a preseason ranking determined by a panel of ESPN writers, Utah was the only team to place three players in the top 25. In fact, only one other Western Conference team had more than two players in the top 50: the Jazz and Warriors each had four, although Klay Thompson is out at least until the All-Star break, and maybe the entire season.

For what it’s worth, Sports Illustrated published a similar ranking where the Jazz and Sixers were the only teams with three players in the top 30. And FiveThirtyEight’s new RAPTOR projection system has Gobert pegged in the “All-Star” category, while Mitchell (“Future All-Star”) and Conley (“Borderline All-Star”) were also included as part of the star class.

So there’s some consensus: the Jazz’s three main guys are studs. The question now becomes: will that matter more in the long run than having a pair of super-duper-stars.

The Lakers’ LeBron James and Anthony Davis are both MVP candidates when they’re at the top of their game. So are Leonard and Paul George for the Clippers, and Rocket guards James Harden and Russell Westbrook both have actual MVP trophies on their mantles. A roster with three All-Stars might be a competitive differentiator for the Jazz in a certain sense, but we’ll find out over the course of the season if two MVP-caliber teammates eclipses Utah’s collection of players just outside that echelon.

The way things stand today, Utah lacks that megastar power. In fact, Gobert, Mitchell and Conley, despite ranking 14th, 20th and 24th (respectively) in ESPN’s ranking, have a grand total of zero All-Star appearances among them. ESPN’s list was more about predicted 2019-20 impact than anything currently on those guys’ résumé, meaning that to realize this Big Three advantage, all three will have to play up to those figures.

But they could. In fact, any or all of them could surpass their projected marks and vault straight into the discussion around the NBA’s best.

Gobert is closest to that tier as of today. There’s already some consensus that’s he’s a top-15 (or so) player — last year he actually tied with LeBron James for 11th place in the MVP voting tabulation, one of twelve players to get some love from ballot holders as a top-5 player.

And while it’s reasonable to assume that the 27-year-old might be closer to his ceiling than Mitchell, he could really benefit from a numbers spike given Utah’s new offensive personnel. Last season, the Jazz had a hard time squeezing passes to Gobert through a thicket of arms and torsos, the result of sagging defenses willfully neglecting shaky shooters on Utah’s offensive perimeter. And yet even with those challenges, Gobert managed to get up more than 13 attempts per 100 team possessions, and he led the league by converting 67% of them. Those numbers often came despite two and three defenders following him to the paint on rolls. He averaged a hair under 16 a game despite all of that.

This season, he’ll have Conley, Bojan Bogdanovic and Jeff Green spotting up in the corners where he used to have Ricky Rubio, Jae Crowder and Derrick Favors. His most frequent pick-and-roll partners this year — Mitchell and Conley — are both players whose pull-up game demands respect. Two guys can’t roll with Rudy anymore. He’s going to get more opportunities to dive into an open interior.

If that’s the case, it’s not that hard to manufacture arithmetic that gets Gobert into pretty elite territory for counting stats. Let’s say the new conditions lead to just a single additional shot attempt for Gobert per 100 possessions. At his current efficiency, that extra shot makes him a 17.2-ppg scorer. If he also forces one more shooting foul per game and keeps his current free throw rate, he gets up to 18.5¹.

Of course, it could go the other way. The Jazz now have more mouths to feed on the perimeter, so maybe the way it will play out is that Gobert’s gravity from the inside will create good looks for others. The way the Jazz play, it’s really almost up to the defense to pick their poison. So there is no guarantee that Gobert will be the primary benefactor of an offense with multiple threats. But even if he benefits just a little from a shot distribution standpoint, he could very feasibly wind up with something like an 18-and-13 season to show for it, without necessarily doing much differently.

Consider for a moment that, as the two-time reigning MVP, he is already the best player in the league at something that makes up 50% of every basketball game. If suddenly he’s averaging 18 a game while also grabbing 13 boards and continuing as one of the NBA’s very best defenders, there comes a point where it’s ridiculous to exclude him from the MVP conversation. And even if he’s merely in the debate, without being a top candidate or taking home a trophy, that means he’d be hanging out in that top 8-10 range where guys like LeBron and Kawhi seem to reside permanently.

There are all very small ifs, predicated only on Gobert continuing to be exactly who he is, but in a different team context.

Mitchell may someday enter the MVP conversation himself, and if his club can outperform lofty expectations, that day might come sooner rather than later.

But in the immediate term, Utah’s best chance of having BOTH a star trio AND a megastar at its core is to milk just a little bit more out of a player who is literally already the league’s most efficient user of offensive possessions in addition to being the game’s premier defender.

Even if none of that happens, Utah still wields a weapon none of its conference peers can claim: a legit Big Three in the time of tandems.

How that unique composition stacks up against dominant duos will likely define Utah’s 2019-20 season.