The two Los Angeles teams may have stolen all of the headlines out West, but the Utah Jazz have had a terrific offseason and have improved dramatically as a ballclub.
The Jazz have added Mike Conley and Bojan Bogdanovic to their team, finally giving them a couple of legitimate offensive weapons alongside of Donovan Mitchell.
We also know how good Utah is defensively. With its newfound offense, it is now a legitimate threat to make some noise in the Western Conference after having been obliterated by the Houston Rockets each of the last two years in the playoffs.
Here are the three biggest takeaways of the offseason for the Jazz:
3. They Made Good Use of their Cap Space
The Jazz entered the offseason with a ton of cap space, enough to sign Kemba Walker or Khris Middleton. When it became obvious that no big-name players were signing in Utah, the Jazz decided to explore other options.
The first thing they did was trade for Conley, which was a huge move. Conley will replace Ricky Rubio at point guard and actually provide the team a scoring threat from that position.
They then signed Bogdanovic, a fine player who is not an A-tier free agent, but was certainly one of the better non-star options available. He will absolutely make Utah better.
You have to give it up to the Jazz. Even though they weren't able to lure a star, they were able to make a couple of other moves to significantly improve their ballclub.
2. They're No Longer One-Dimensional
The last two years, Utah's offense in the playoffs essentially consisted of just giving Mitchell the ball and letting him try to create something.
The Jazz didn't really have any other scorers, with Joe Ingles probably representing their best second option. As a result, Utah was infinitely easily to defend in the playoffs; it had no threats outside of Mitchell.
But now, the Jazz have three guys who can get buckets in crucial moments, with Conley and Bogdanovic both having big-game experience, having shown the ability to run an offense.
Not only that, but Utah now has some legitimate perimeter shooting threats, allowing Mitchell to find kickouts off dribble penetration.
And, of course, the Rudy Gobert pick-and-roll option is still there.
1. They are Now Officially a Big Boy Team
The Jazz have been decent the last couple of years, but everyone knew they weren't legitimate contenders, and I don't think anyone expected them to beat Houston in either of the last two postseasons.
However, now, you can say that Utah is a top-three team in the West, and people wouldn't say you're crazy.
The Jazz are balanced and have talent on both sides of the ball. The pieces seem to fit together very well. There really isn't a real glaring weakness on this team; it also has depth to go along with its strong starting lineup.
Utah has now reached a point where upper-echelon squads such as the Clippers and Lakers should seriously fear it in a seven-game series, because the Jazz are no longer messing around.
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