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The more and more looks back at history the more and more I understand the mindset of some of the other fans I get a chance to hang out with every day. For me I became an NBA fan back when the offenses were truly explosive. Then the grind it out Knicks / Pat Riley years that put an emphasis on defense slowed things down quite a bit. The NBA saw this too and changed a lot of the rules to benefit the offensive players again (back in the old day they were just better on offense than now), and we've seen a bounce back for some teams. The Utah Jazz haven't quite returned to their levels of frequency (back when they weren't winning they were still fun to watch), and then when they were winning, they had excellent players that could win games because of an efficient offense.
After the team traded away Deron Williams we have lacked a dynamic player on offense. We may not have one this year, but we do have young legs in Trey Burke, Alec Burks, Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors, and Enes Kanter. Off the bench we also have Brandon Rush (who isn't old, and probably will start), Marvin Williams (getting there, but should be in peak condition), Jeremy Evans, and Rudy Gobert. That's a solid run and gun group there.
Again, we may not win a lot (we may, we don't know), but at least we can be fun to watch. Part of that is pace of play. Pace can be influenced in specific ways (like offensive rebounds -- which we benefited from the last few seasons, which masked how slowly we actually played), but for the most part it tells the tale of how many offensive possessions your team gets in a given game, on average.
Let's take a trip down memory lane and look at how quickly the Jazz played (by themselves, and their NBA pace rank) over the last 30 seasons:
| Jazz Pace | NBA | |||||
| Season | (# of Pos in a game) | Pace Rank | ||||
| 1 | 1983 | 1984 | 104.9 | 3 | ||
| 2 | 1984 | 1985 | 105.1 | 2 | ||
| 3 | 1985 | 1986 | 103.3 | 9 | ||
| 4 | 1986 | 1987 | 103.2 | 3 | ||
| 5 | 1987 | 1988 | 101.5 | 6 | ||
| 6 | 1988 | 1989 | 98.0 | 22 | ||
| 7 | 1989 | 1990 | 96.1 | 21 | ||
| 8 | 1990 | 1991 | 95.3 | 20 | ||
| 9 | 1991 | 1992 | 95.5 | 17 | ||
| 10 | 1992 | 1993 | 96.5 | 12 | ||
| 11 | 1993 | 1994 | 93.1 | 23 | ||
| 12 | 1994 | 1995 | 92.6 | 16 | ||
| 13 | 1995 | 1996 | 90.0 | 25 | ||
| 14 | 1996 | 1997 | 90.0 | 17 | ||
| 15 | 1997 | 1998 | 89.2 | 21 | ||
| 16 | 1998 | 1999 | 87.0 | 23 | ||
| 17 | 1999 | 2000 | 89.6 | 27 | ||
| 18 | 2000 | 2001 | 89.8 | 21 | ||
| 19 | 2001 | 2002 | 90.3 | 16 | ||
| 20 | 2002 | 2003 | 89.3 | 24 | ||
| 21 | 2003 | 2004 | 86.6 | 28 | ||
| 22 | 2004 | 2005 | 88.4 | 26 | ||
| 23 | 2005 | 2006 | 87.8 | 26 | ||
| 24 | 2006 | 2007 | 91.6 | 15 | ||
| 25 | 2007 | 2008 | 93.2 | 10 | ||
| 26 | 2008 | 2009 | 93.1 | 9 | ||
| 27 | 2009 | 2010 | 93.8 | 9 | ||
| 28 | 2010 | 2011 | 91.0 | 19 | ||
| 29 | 2011 | 2012 | 91.4 | 12 | ||
| 30 | 2012 | 2013 | 90.9 | 21 | ||
| Average | 1983 | 1988 | 103.6 | 4.6 | ||
| Average | 1988 | 1993 | 96.3 | 18.4 | ||
| Average | 1993 | 1998 | 91.0 | 20.4 | ||
| Average | 1998 | 2003 | 89.2 | 22.2 | ||
| Average | 2003 | 2008 | 89.5 | 21.0 | ||
| Average | 2008 | 2013 | 92.0 | 14.0 | ||
| Average | 1983 | 2013 | 93.6 | 16.8 | ||
Yeah, when I was a fan the NBA was offense. I can imagine how differently someone who got into the NBA in the mid 2000s views the beautiful game. I guess it would be easily to accept an inferior product if this is the only game you know.
Well, old man comments alone, the Jazz were really slow, but have picked it up a little bit. Still, our 30 year average if 93.6 pos/game. We're below that each of the last five years. So . . . should we ramp it up again?