This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

As the Utah Jazz open their 37th season on Wednesday night in Detroit, they intend to close it by playing into the postseason for the 26th time. It's been a while. It's been long enough. If their building is dark come last week of April, first week of May, run No. 37 will be defined by disappointment.

"We plan on working hard, yeah, on making the playoffs," Derrick Favors said.

And that, that kind of intention and expectation, is a compliment to how far the club has bounced since its last postseason qualification in 2012, when it was eliminated in the first round.

Re-engineering the Jazz has been an arduous process and the team has asked for patience from its fans and gotten it. The club tore away a frustratingly fruitless situation — being OK, but not really good — and, then, wasted a year by trying to win when it should have been growing young players, dwelling momentarily in a kind of no man's land of competitive hopelessness, before getting serious about the rebuild.

Think about the mood around the Jazz and who was on that last playoff team: Al Jefferson, Paul Millsap, Devin Harris, C.J. Miles, Josh Howard, Earl Watson, Enes Kanter. Raja Bell and Blake Ahearn were on that team. Ty Corbin was the coach.

Jefferson took 1,048 shots that year, more than double the number taken by a promising young forward named Gordon Hayward. That was back in the day when newcomer Favors attempted a hundred fewer shots than the bomb-launching, cheeseburger-eating Miles, when the Jazz played offense mostly by lobbing the ball into the low post, with everyone else standing around, when they played defense by having their Nikes nailed to the floor, and, as a last resort, slapping opponents as they took their shots — the Jazz committed 1,441 fouls in total.

That team sneaked into the playoffs, where it was promptly swept back out by the Spurs, without much anticipation of improvement for the next season(s).

Think about the mood around the Jazz now, and the prominent players in the fold: Rudy Gobert, Hayward, Favors, Rodney Hood, Alec Burks, an injured-but-healing Dante Exum, Trey Burke, and the rest. Quin Snyder is the coach. If the Jazz end up back in the playoffs again, the team's positive vibe will be considerably advanced from where it was in 2011-12.

Optimism often sprouts out of youth and the Jazz still have that, with their main cogs all 25-and-under, which means their best basketball is yet to be seen. From that standpoint, Snyder is the right coach, with the acumen and demeanor to teach what still needs to be learned. When the Jazz put up that lame effort in the second-to-last preseason game against Oklahoma City, a talented, veteran team poised to return from injury last season to contend for a title this time around, Snyder was all over that, telling his players, in effect, that they hadn't done jack-squat yet. They finished last season 19-10, but that was against supposedly, as Snyder said it, unmotivated teams that had little for which to play.

Perfect.

Snyder isn't going to let his youngsters get away with getting comfortable, with substandard effort. They aren't savvy enough to do that. The way he figures it, expensive loafers go on his feet, not on his court. The Jazz won 13 more games in Snyder's first year than they did the year before, and, while that identical progress for year two is probably unattainable, reaching forward enough to make the playoffs is not.

Everybody knows the West will be tough, but there are quality teams that have suffered some regression, regression the Jazz can wave at as they pass on by. There will be nights when they struggle to find enough points — and that's where Hayward and Favors will have to not just call for the ball, but consistently do something positive with it when it arrives. Burks has to score, Hood must hit from the perimeter. It will be required of Burke — and Raul Neto, too — to make smart, unselfish choices on the floor, to set up teammates where it suits them best.

And defense will be the hammer.

Back when the Jazz last made an appearance in the postseason, and in the preceding years, they had nobody to stop teams from crushing them in the paint. Now, they have two stoppers: Gobert and Favors. If the wings and the guys out front replicate in Exum's absence what was done down the stretch last season, from start to finish, think about the prospects. Complete, then, the following cliché: Defense wins … defense wins … well, you know what it wins.

C … h … a … m …

OK, no, no it doesn't, not this time around. Not even close. But at this particular juncture on a reasonable timeline for a young, emerging team, it certainly can at the barest of minimums qualify a team for a top eight spot in the West. And it will.

The Jazz are bound to struggle out of the gate, with so many road games up front. But look for the Gobert Effect to take hold as the season wears on, a team-wide nastiness and orneriness and pride that will transform the Jazz in and around the league from a likable bunch of kids to a team that opponents complain about and hate to play. There's a theory that the Jazz won't sneak up on anybody this time around because word's out from their stretch-run success.

Well. Word being out doesn't shrink Gobert's dimensions or his determined bearing, nor does it diminish Favors' eagerness to establish himself as a consistent force, nor does it satisfy the hunger of a maturing team out to prove that it belongs where all good teams announce themselves as exactly that - in the playoffs.

The Jazz will better themselves by 10 victories this time around, winning 48.

Which is to say, the lights will be on at Vivint Smart Home Arena at the end of April, and it won't be for a Taylor Swift or Janet Jackson concert. It will be for what the place was built to showcase: a Jazz playoff team, with intentions for more than just that in the seasons ahead.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.