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Toronto • The Utah Jazz showed their youth this weekend.
Rodney Hood, Raul Neto and Trey Lyles got their first taste of the pageantry of All-Star weekend when they suited up for the league's Rising Stars rookie-sophomore game.
The Jazz are the fourth-youngest team in the NBA and, along with the Minnesota Timberwolves, were one of two teams with three players in that showcase for the league's up-and-comers.
But as Hood and company departed Toronto to rejoin their just slightly older teammates back at work, the Jazz will have a chance to prove they belong with the league's big boys.
There are 30 games left in the regular season and the Jazz sit in eighth place in the Western Conference, even in record with seventh-place Portland and a half-game ahead of the ninth-pace Houston Rockets.
"We're taking it game by game," Hood said. "We haven't really been talking about the playoffs. If we make it, it would be amazing with us being such a young team. [Our goal] is to just game by game to get better, and if we do that, we'll be where we want to be by the spring."
Utah did what it had to with the softest portion of its schedule. The Jazz entered the break having won seven of their last eight games and after rallying to claim an overtime win against the Mavericks last week, Dallas coach Rick Carlisle came away impressed with the youngsters.
"That's a team that's on the rise," he said. "That's a team that's the future of our league."
On TNT's broadcast that night, Hall of Famer Charles Barkley declared that the Jazz have "the best young talent in the NBA from top to bottom."
Now, can Gordon Hayward and Derrick Favors lead a push to get back to the postseason for the first time since their rookie season, when the Jazz were swept by the Spurs in four games? The defense that sparked their surprising push at the end of last season has re-emerged with the return of big men Favors and Rudy Gobert, both of whom missed a month of action due to injury. And some stars could be aligning in the Jazz's favor. Shooting guard Alec Burks is inching closer to his return to the court. And while their schedule stiffens some, it remains friendlier than some of the teams battling for a position in the bottom half of the West's playoff race.
"I feel good," Favors said. "We have had a lot of really good games. A number of different guys have had to step up this season with all the injuries we have had, and they have stepped up. I feel pretty good where we are at overall as a team, and we look forward to continuing to play well after the break and get better."
afalk@sltrib.com Twitter: @tribjazz —
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League's youngest teams
Considering they have the fourth-youngest average age in the NBA, the Jazz's playoff push actually demonstrates how well they're doing relative to the league's other fresh faces:
Team Avg. age Record (Pct.)
76ers 22.8 8-45 (.151)
Bucks 23.7 22-32 (.407)
Magic 23.8 23-29 (.442)
Jazz 24.2 26-26 (.500)
Blazers 24.3 27-27 (.500)
Source: basketball-reference.com