History in the Making

We have just witnessed what many if not all NBA observers are calling the greatest road trip in league history. The Utah Jazz just completed 4 – 0 sweep of the NBA’s Southeast division. These four teams had a combined 123 – 41 record at home last year, and that was before the Miami Heat added LeBron James and Chris Soft, I mean Bosh. But what makes this truly amazing is that the Jazz, hereafter referred to as the greatest team in the NBA, not only won these 4 games in 5 nights but did so after trailing by double digits in every game.

The entire NBA is scared right now. The Jazz have tapped into something that makes them an even more formidable opponent. Much like the 72 win ’96 Chicago Bulls, who had superior talent compared to the rest of league (Karl Malone and St. John Stockton being the exception) and who were able to motivate themselves by making up reasons to be mad at lesser opponents, the Jazz have figured a way to keep themselves mentally involved in games against teams comprised of much less talent. The trick is they simply spot the teams 15 or 20 points and then try to beat them in 2 quarters of play. For a team as vastly superior as the Jazz, excuse me, as the greatest team in the NBA, this is much more interesting than simply beating a team straight up over four quarters of play. If they simply did that it would be like the 92 dream team, let’s face it.

Jerry Sloan has been the mastermind behind this plan. A plan, by the way, that is much harder to execute on court than it appears on paper. The first trick to successfully executing this game plan is to actually get behind. Apparently the Jazz front office approached the NBA brass about simply starting games down 20 to nothing to make things fair but this idea was shot down. So Coach Sloan and his staff took it upon themselves to coach this technique. It took a little practice. In fact they were so bad at it that they went undefeated in the pre-season. Finally, with the regular season starting they were able to focus, play their starters more, and they perfected the art of falling behind losing to Denver in game 1 by 22 points and Phoenix by 16.

After perfecting the getting behind they were then able to focus on the coming back. They have done very well repeating the process 5 straight times now. In fact in Charlotte on Saturday night they were so good at it that they immediately got down 10 to 0. Then they followed the script perfectly eventually getting down by 18 waiting until it was almost too late to come back and finally winning on a beautiful shot by Deron Williams on the last play of the game.

So take time to sit back and enjoy this run. It isn’t everyday that history shows up on your step and rings the doorbell.