This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

As much as everyone around here hoped the Jazz would make the playoffs, everyone also was certain that the Jazz, had they gotten in, would have been beaten badly and forthrightly eliminated by the Warriors or Spurs.

They might have learned a lesson or two, many of the players going through that process for the first time, but their youthful confidence might have taken a thrashing, too. It's no reach to say the Jazz, as a seventh or eighth seed, had no shot at winning. Aside from their own circumstances, ambitions and abilities, if history is any lesson, they would have been climbing a wall leaning toward and hanging over them.

That's just the way it is in the NBA.

It's been said that the league's playoffs are the fairest of all postseasons.

They might also be the most predictable — and the most boring.

Not from an action standpoint, but from a competitive one.

Fact is, and there's little ammo to argue the point, to thrive in the NBA postseason setting, you need a star. Not just a star, a superstar, and probably two of them, along with the conscientious foot soldiers.

A lot of people took note of the lopsided scores over the first three days of this year's playoffs. The Warriors crushed the Rockets in the first game, and beat them minus Steph Curry in the second. The Spurs overwhelmed the Grizzlies. The Heat wiped out the Hornets. The Clippers torched the Blazers.

In that opening weekend, there were just two first-round matchups in which the underdogs/losers stayed within single digits of the favorites/winners — the Hawks/Celtics and the Cavs/Pistons. Exceptions do exist. The favored Raptors lost to the Pacers in Game 1 and came back to win Game 2. The Mavs, after getting embarrassed in their first game against the Thunder, rebounded to take the second.

We'll see how all of it plays out. But here's the way it typically happens: Chalk talks. Statistical gauges substantiate that conclusion.

There are a couple of ways to look at it, and both are true. The first is the NBA, of all leagues, is the least balanced, and the second is playoff upsets don't come around all that often, certainly not as often as they happen in other sports and other leagues.

Clear reasons for that include fewer variables, a great number of possessions per game, and a more extensive playoff series. In the NFL, everything is up for grabs in a one-game-winner-moves-on format. Hockey and baseball also have best-of-seven playoff setups, but they have a whole lot more unpredictability in greater numbers of key players who, depending on individual performances of the night or string of nights in the series, add in moving parts that may not be so obvious.

The lines of distinction get more blurred as the rounds go by, but even then, if you've got Curry on your team as one of only five starters, or LeBron James, or Kawhi Leonard, you've got a terrific chance of winning.

That's the problem with worrying about or counting on a kind of group-development project such as the one the Jazz have undertaken: Will it ever be enough to counter the superstar effect/advantage a very few other teams have? Dennis Lindsey said at the Jazz's locker clean-out session the Jazz are playoff-competitive, but how long will it take them to become championship-competitive? Or even conference-championship-competitive?

To do so, they need ... well, you know what.

The idea of replicating what the Detroit Pistons did in 2004 is chasing an exception. On the other hand, what are teams without established stars supposed to do, give up? Their only chance is to grow and grow and grow the grass under their feet, and rearrange the lawn furniture the best they can. And maybe something others didn't see as clearly will emerge.

Say, a Rudy Gobert or Rodney Hood or Trey Lyles or Dante Exum blossoms to eventually blow everybody away, becoming much more than most anticipated. The promising news is that Curry and Leonard fall into that category, although they are anomalies.

Upsets do happen.

The lowest seed to win an NBA title in modern times is a team the Jazz are painfully aware of, a team that beat them in the 1995 playoffs — the Houston Rockets, who were sixth in the West. But that outfit had Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, and was defending a title from 1994. The 1978 Washington Bullets took a championship after winning just 44 regular-season games. That was four decades ago.

As a rule, more than any other sport or league, if a franchise has aspirations to be among the best teams in the NBA's postseason, it had best actually be one of the best.

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.