Chemistry more vital than talent

One of my fondest sports memories came during my junior year of high school. During the fall intramural basketball tournament, my good friends Howie and Jim and I put together a basketball team we called Mo's Hawks.

We won four or five games in the junior class tournament, then were matched up against the best senior team for the school title and beat them also. It was a huge upset and I still remember how mad the seniors were, that a bunch of juniors had knocked them off for the school championship.

The following year, when I played on the school's varsity, we thought we had a pretty good team and had dreams of taking state, which our school had done a few years earlier.

However, we had a poor season and never came close to making the state tournament. We did come close to winning nearly every time we played, but we lost a bunch of games by less than five points and ended up with one of the worst records in school history.

So what was the difference between the two aforementioned teams?

The first had chemistry.

The second did not.

Our team that won the school intramural championship didn't have the best overall talent in the school, but we were a group of good friends who liked each other, rooted for each other and played well together, allowing us to beat all comers.

The varsity basketball team, on the other hand, had different factions that never melded well and a coach that couldn't bring us together. The result was an underachieving season.

Which brings me to the Utah Jazz.

We keep hearing about how this player is better than that and how certain players absolutely must be kept in order for the Jazz to go forward. But my question is this: Are the Jazz going to be any better next year with everyone back, even if everyone is healthy?

You could argue that the Jazz were better last year when certain players were out of the lineup rather than the end of the season when everyone got healthy.

A decade ago when the Jazz went to the NBA Finals two years in a row, not only did they have a couple of great players in Stockton and Malone, but those two had great chemistry — nearly 20 years worth in the end.

Bryon Russell was a second-round draft pick who fit in well with Stockton and Malone, and the Jazz took off when they traded Jeff Malone for Jeff Hornacek, who wasn't any more talented than Jeff Malone, but one who fit in much better.