As the Utah Jazz are mired in a four-game losing streak, many — including All-Star Donovan Mitchell — have questioned whether or not the team is capable of winning a championship.
Last week, ESPN’s Kirk Goldsberry wrote a piece in which he divided the 30 NBA teams into seven tiers, and the Jazz ended up in just the third tier, which Goldsberry called the “Solid playoff teams” tier.
Eight teams were ahead of Utah (“The six true contenders” and two “dangerous loomers”), and the Cleveland Cavaliers were with the Jazz in their tier.
Despite the tier Utah was placed in, Goldsberry wrote, “Once again, the Jazz have been awesome. They have the highest BPI (Basketball Power Index) title chance of any of the league’s 30 teams. But BPI doesn’t include “ghosts of playoffs past” in its calculations. It seems like this Utah team has been dominating regular-season games for years now, only to flame out in the postseason.”
Goldsberry noted how the Jazz have gotten out of the first round of the playoffs just once in the last three years, and how last season they blew a 2-0 lead on the LA Clippers in the second round.
“Given that recent postseason track record, it’s hard to count on Utah upending teams like Golden State and Phoenix in the postseason,” Goldsberry wrote. “And based on the current playoff bracket, the Jazz would likely have to beat both those teams in series without home-court advantage to reach the Finals.”