The 7-seed Utah Jazz exited the 2003 NBA Playoffs quickly and quietly, falling 4–1 in the First Round to the 2-seed Sacramento Kings.
On the road in Game 5, they trailed 29–15 by the end of the first quarter and never got any closer than eight points, eventually falling 111–91. There’s no shame in losing when you simply run into a stronger team.
But that defeat marked the end of an era for the Jazz. For the past 18 seasons, John Stockton and Karl Malone had been teammates in Utah, forming one of the greatest duos in NBA history.
During that span, Utah finished with a winning record and made the playoffs every year, reaching the NBA Finals in both 1997 and 1998. Malone set the record for most points scored with a single franchise. Stockton is the league’s all-time leader in assists and steals.
However, the tandem now had a combined age of over 80, and neither would return the following season. Stockton decided to retire, while Malone opted to play his final season for a championship contender in the Lakers.
The departure of both legends should have spelled a rebuild for the Jazz.
When Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen left the Bulls following the 1997–98 season, Chicago went from three straight titles to three straight seasons with fewer than 20 wins.
Similarly, the Cavaliers went 19–63 the season after both of LeBron James’ departures.
Utah wasn’t an especially strong team to begin with. Losing Stockton and Malone, along with starting shooting guard Calbert Cheaney and backup point guard Mark Jackson (each in their 30s) left the Jazz as a young team with a decimated roster.
Of the 2003–04 Jazz’s top 10 leaders in minutes played, just one (Greg Ostertag) was above the age of 27, and just two (Matt Harpring and Andrei Kirilenko) had scored more than 6.0 PPG in the previous season.
Typically, young teams at least feature players selected early in the NBA Draft and projected to have high potential. The above list features no players taken in the lottery.
Harpring was drafted the earliest (15th overall) and had been the team’s second-leading scorer the year prior. Naturally, he assumed the role of team captain. However, he would play just 31 games before suffering a season-ending knee injury.
When healthy, the team’s starting lineup featured a backcourt of Carlos Arroyo and Deshawn Stevenson, who had each played sparingly on the 2002–03 Jazz. They were joined by returning starters Harpring and Ostertag at small forward and center, while former sixth man Kirilenko took Karl Malone’s place at power forward.
Utah’s over/under was set at just 25.5 wins, the fewest in the NBA. Even that figure seemed generous to some, such as Seattle-based ESPN contributor Frank Hughes, who wrote that the Jazz “could be the worst team in NBA history.”
Bill Simmons offered that “one thing’s for sure: Utah will be the worst team in the West”, adding that “this could be the team that yields Shaq’s first 100-point game.”
Just about everyone had the team pegged as cellar-dwellers, and for good reason.
As Zach Kram pointed out for The Ringer in 2021, there is a strong correlation between a team’s average age and their winning percentage, with older teams tending to perform better.
According to Basketball Reference, the 2000–01 Utah Jazz had an average weighted age of 32.0, which makes them the joint oldest team on record, along with the 1997–98 Rockets.
By 2002–03, the Jazz had remained the oldest team in the NBA with an average weighted age of 30.9. However, in 2003–04, that figure dropped all the way to 24.9, making Utah one of the five youngest teams in the league.
Their opening-day roster featured zero former All-Star selections. Just before the trade deadline, Utah would acquire 1997 All-Star Tom Gugliotta, but he never scored more than eight points for the team.
The 2003–04 Utah Jazz were never going to beat anyone on pure talent alone. This was not a team of star players. They were session musicians, each brought on to fill a particular role.
However, they did have two key pieces that served as the foundation for everyone to fit in around — a producer and a bandleader.
Jerry Sloan was a legend before he ever set foot in the Beehive State as a coach. A two-time NCAA Division II national champion at Evansville, Sloan was selected in the first round of the 1965 NBA Draft by the Baltimore Bullets.
He would spend just one season there, as in 1966, the Chicago Bulls joined the league as an expansion team and selected Sloan in the expansion draft. With Chicago, Sloan carved out a successful career as a shooting guard, being selected to two All-Star teams and six All-Defensive teams.
Sloan was known as the “Original Bull,” and became the first player to have his jersey retired by the team. While no other members of the inaugural 1966–67 Bulls remained in Chicago by the start of the 1970s, Sloan spent a full 10 seasons with the Bulls before retiring in 1976.
To this day, there are only three players who have recorded 10,000 points and 5,000 rebounds with the Bulls — Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Jerry Sloan.
It wasn’t long before Sloan was back with the Bulls, first as a scout, then assistant, and finally head coach beginning in the 1979–80 season.
After being fired in 1982, Sloan joined the Jazz organization, eventually getting another crack at head coach during the 1988–89 campaign after Frank Layden walked away from coaching to become team president and general manager.
In Utah, Sloan led a perennial winner. Over 23 seasons, he won 1,127 regular season games. Gregg Popovich is the only other head coach to win at least 1,000 games with a single franchise.
Sloan was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in 2009 while still active. He ultimately resigned in 2011 with 1,221 career victories, currently fourth-most all-time.
Entering the 2003–04 season, Sloan had led the Jazz to a winning record and playoff appearance in each of his 15 years at the helm. At 61 years old and without Stockton and Malone, retirement was a possibility for Sloan, but he decided to meet the challenge of coaching without the historic duo.
If nothing else, the team would play hard. As J.A. Adande wrote, “The Sloan method means that anything less than full effort is unacceptable.”
As a player, Sloan took pride in playing with high energy on defense and fighting for loose balls. He is one of just seven players in NBA history (min. 100 GP) to average at least seven rebounds per game for a career at 6’5” or shorter.
That same level of intensity would be mandatory from Utah’s roster as Sloan looked to manufacture a winning team against all odds.
Jerry Sloan was a producer unlike any other. However, this Jazz band still needed a leader. Luckily, one just happened to emerge, with one of the most underrated seasons in NBA history.
There was a lot to like about Andrei Kirilenko’s first two seasons in the NBA. The 6’9” Russian forward was only 18 years old when the Jazz took him 24th overall in the 1999 NBA Draft, but he didn’t come to Utah until 2001.
When he did, Kirilenko quickly became a fan favorite as a versatile, hyperactive player with unique defensive ability. With a huge 7’4” wingspan, he glided around the court, seemingly everywhere at once.
As a rookie, Kirilenko played in all 82 games, making 40 starts. He was named to the All-Rookie First Team with averages of 10.4 PPG, 5.3 RPG, 1.4 SPG, and 1.9 BPG. Despite being 20 years old and playing just 26.2 MPG, he was one of only two players with 100+ steals and 150+ blocks, along with Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace.
In his second season, Kirilenko had slightly improved numbers in all major categories while serving primarily as Utah’s sixth man.
Kirilenko was a bright young piece for the Jazz who was expected to become a focal point of the depleted 2003–04 team alongside Harpring. He ended up being much more than that — going from the bench to one of the league’s most valuable players.
His defensive presence continued to overwhelm the opposition. By finishing third in the NBA in blocks per game and fourth in steals per game, Kirilenko became the only player to finish top-four in both categories in a season.
He also became the most recent player to record 150+ steals and 200+ blocks in a season, something only Hakeem Olajuwon (four times) and David Robinson (1991–92) have also accomplished.
But Kirilenko’s impact extended far beyond that side of the floor. He made strides as a scorer, leading the team in made threes while finishing top-12 in the NBA in free throw attempts, and became a significant passing threat.
No period showcased his all-around talents better than early December. In a road game against Houston on the 3rd, Kirilenko finished with 19 points, five rebounds, seven assists, eight steals, and five blocks.
By recording at least five of each statistic, he had achieved the incredibly rare “5x5,” something that has only happened 21 times in the 50 seasons since steals and blocks have been officially tracked.
Then, exactly a week later, Kirilenko had another 5x5, this time against the Knicks. Olajuwon is the only other player in recorded history with multiple 5x5s in an entire career.
Kirilenko managed to achieve this all while the Jazz played an excruciatingly slow brand of basketball.
Since 1973–74, there have been 1,343 individual team seasons. Of them, the 2003–04 Jazz rank 1,332nd in pace, meaning more than 99% of other teams played faster. Utah both scored and allowed fewer than 90 points per game.
They were an extreme example of the era they played in. Kevin Garnett finished second in the NBA with 24.2 PPG in 2003–04. In 2022–23, Pascal Siakam averaged 24.2 PPG, and it was only good for 19th in the league.
The Jazz went as Kirilenko did. In his best 33 games of the season according to John Hollinger’s Game Score, Utah had a 26–7 record, good for a 65-win pace over a full season.
When Kirilenko had a plus/minus of -4 or worse, the Jazz were 0–29. They simply were not going to make a comeback without him. Utah lost all four games Kirilenko sat out by an average of 13.8 PPG.
Advanced metrics adored Kirilenko. He ended the regular season eighth in PER, fifth in win shares, third in box plus/minus, and second in VORP, trailing only league MVP Garnett.
Kirilenko was named an All-Star and to an All-Defensive Team. He came fifth in Defensive Player of the Year voting.
This was only his age-22 season. Utah’s centerpiece had arrived.
Utah opened the season at home against the Trail Blazers. Carlos Arroyo, the anonymous replacement for John Stockton, shined, setting new career highs with 18 points and 13 assists.
In the fourth quarter alone, he had 12 points and five assists as the Jazz outscored Portland 33–22 to steal a 99–92 victory. Arroyo, Kirilenko, and sixth man Raja Bell accounted for all of Utah’s points while missing two combined shots.
Before the season, some thought the Jazz could be the worst team in NBA history. At the time, that honor belonged to the 76ers, who finished 9–73 in the 1972–73 season.
After defeating the Nets on the first day of December, Utah improved to 10–6 on the year. They would surpass their win total line of 25.5 before the All-Star Break.
This was not a particularly talented team offensively. The Jazz were just 22nd in the NBA in true shooting percentage, which, combined with their pace, led to 76 games scoring fewer than 100 points.
That figure is second-most all-time, trailing only the 1999–2000 Bulls (77 games) in their first full season without Jordan and Pippen.
But, as you’d expect from a Jerry Sloan team, they led the NBA in offensive rebounding percentage (34.1%), a mark that hasn’t been bested since. With the increased rate of three-point attempts, we may never see another team offensive rebound at that clip.
Bill Simmons opined that the Jazz could allow a 100-point game to Shaq. In three outings against Utah, O’Neal averaged 15.3 PPG — his fewest against any team that season. He never once scored even 20 points against the Jazz.
The Jazz remained above .500 for most of the season and finished at 42–40, a mark you’d think would get them into the playoffs.
For almost the entirety of NBA history, at least half of teams have qualified for the postseason each year. The only exceptions came in the 1971–74 postseasons, which featured eight of the league’s then 17 teams (47%).
Since 16 of 29 teams reached the playoffs in 2004, it stands that a 42–40 Utah team should be in pretty good shape. In fact, of the 52 teams in league history to finish exactly 42–40, 79% have made the postseason.
Not the Jazz. In fact, in the seven-team Midwest Division, the Jazz finished…seventh.
In the NBA’s 77-year history, there have been nine divisions to finish with every team above .500. The Midwest Division is the only one to do so with more than five teams.
A seven-team division all finishing with winning records is almost impossible and comes only at the expense of the rest of the league.
Only six of the other 22 teams in the NBA finished with a winning record, fewer than the Midwest Division by itself. The 15-team Eastern Conference had just four teams above .500, meaning that had they been in the East, the Jazz would’ve found themselves in a 4/5 playoff matchup with the Heat.
Miami also finished at 42–40. In the seven-team Atlantic Division, they came second.
With a loss to the Timberwolves in Game 81, the Jazz were officially eliminated from playoff contention. The defeat snapped the franchise’s 20-year streak of appearances, although they had already secured a 19th-straight winning season.
In their season finale, the Jazz fell 89–84 at home to the Suns. All 12 eligible players for Utah played at least 10 minutes, which is exceedingly rare. Throughout the entire 2003–04 season, that happened just eight times, roughly once per 300 team games.
Most of those instances came in blowouts, where a team emptied their bench in the fourth quarter with the outcome already decided. The Jazz were the only team to do so in a game decided by single digits.
In a way, it was symbolic of their entire season — everyone chipped in, but they came up just short.
This was a team with a weighted average age of under 25. The other four NBA teams that season who could say the same all finished with 35 or fewer wins.
This was a team who had two of their three largest salary cap hits come from Glen Rice (who was waived before the season and only acquired to make sure Utah reached the NBA’s salary floor) and Keon Clark (who played just 27 minutes over two games for the team).
This was a team with no expectations who clawed to a winning record. Jerry Sloan was second in NBA Coach of the Year voting, just behind Hubie Brown of the Grizzlies. It was his fifth top-three finish in the past eight seasons, all without actually winning the award.
For his career, Sloan would record 10 top-five finishes and five top-threes, never taking home the hardware. Sloan, who sits fourth on the all-time wins list for head coaches, is the only one of the nine winningest head coaches without a Coach of the Year title. The 2003–04 Jazz was arguably his most impressive performance.
Time eventually caught up with Utah as they fell to 26–56 in the 2004–05 season, good for 14th of 15 in the Western Conference. But just two years later, Sloan had the Jazz back in the conference finals.
Andrei Kirienko was on that team, and would remain with the Jazz through the 2010–11 season, also Sloan’s last in Utah.
However, Kirilenko’s superstar trajectory plateaued shortly after his breakout season. He was never going to be a dominant scorer — even in 2003–04, his 11.6 field goal attempts per 36 minutes ranked only sixth-most among nine Jazz players to play at least 1,000 total minutes. His 16.5 PPG that year would end as his career high.
Kirilenko would be named to All-Defensive Teams once again in 2004–05 (when he led the NBA with 3.3 BPG) and 2005–06. Yet, in the 2006–07 season, he lost confidence and struggled to find his role as Carlos Boozer, Deron Williams, and Mehmet Okur continued to emerge as the new-look Jazz’s nucleus.
The remainder of his NBA career (which included late stints with the Timberwolves and Nets) was spent as a strong defender who was never really more than a fourth option on offense although he was a relatively good ball handler and passer for his size.
2003–04 would prove to be Kirilenko’s only All-Star campaign. He is just one of five retired NBA players to be named an All-Star by their age-22 season and then never be selected again.
But in that one year, he served as the driving force for a team who had no business competing and did so until the very end. The 2003–04 Utah Jazz lost two Hall of Famers and roughly 58% of their scoring from the season prior. They replaced those losses with no one of note.
Utah had three total players who averaged even 6.0 PPG in 2002–03. One (Matt Harpring) played his final game of the season on January 2. Another (Gordan Giricek) wasn’t acquired until the trade deadline in February. The final (Andrei Kirilenko) was a 22-year-old defensive monster who attempted only 14 and 12 field goals even in his pair of 30-point games.
This team exceeded any reasonable expectation, finished as one of 13 NBA teams with a winning record, and was left out of a 16-team playoff field after playing in one of the toughest divisions in league history.
They never got their flowers, but they stuck together the whole way. “Everyone said we would be the worst team in the NBA,” Kirilenko said. “We’ve stayed like a team.”
Statistics for this story were primarily found through Basketball Reference and Stathead.
