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Spoken expectations were tamped down on Monday by Jazz players who opened training camp by repeatedly cautioning themselves that they had not yet accomplished anything and that making the playoffs for the first time since just about anybody can remember would take focus, fortitude and function.

That part's up to them.

Everyone else can clean knock themselves out.

And here's why: The Jazz can be good, at last. Not just kind of good. Not just potentially good. Not just we're-not-skipping-any-steps-so-hang-in-there-with-us good. Not dancing-on-the-edge good.

They can be real good. For real.

No hype. No pipe dream. No optimism gone wild. No BS.

If the Jazz aren't playoff good this time around, it won't be on account of the Fates or weird injuries or general bad luck. It will be because they didn't properly do their jobs.

And that's a major departure from past seasons. Now, they are fully equipped to make a serious run — not to the outer layer of the postseason, rather straight to the heart of it.

Nobody's crazy here. Thanks to Kevin Durant, no team will knock off the Golden State Warriors, unless it's LeBron's Cavs, and even that's doubtful. Imaginations for the Jazz cannot be stretched that far, to that rarefied title-contention extent, regardless of the fact that so many NBA observers are adding all sorts of elasticity to those imaginations, predicting terrific things for Quin Snyder's team. Terrific in the sense of gaining, perhaps, home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. That's what a whole lot of smart people are saying.

The Jazz are smart enough not to be among them.

What they say — and even more importantly, what they think — before the season starts, and throughout the 82 games, will be key to feeding their own hunger, their own inner beast, and fulfilling their own promise. The only way for them to approach this new day, and every day from now until April, is to hammer rock in the quarry, to keep reminding themselves, like they did Monday, that they haven't yet done a darn thing. That should and would keep their egos subdued and their wills strong. And each of those elements must be in their mix.

They have no star, so none of them can afford to think or act like one.

One of the reasons that's so significant is because Snyder has something this season that he's never before had in Utah — options. He's got pieces to move, adjustments to make, players to play, players to sit. He can go big, go small, go slow, go fast, go inside, go outside, go with the starters, go with the bench, go young, go old.

If Gordon Hayward is trying to do too much, forcing matters, taking bad shots, turning the ball over, Snyder can sit him. If Rudy Gobert is too much of a liability at the offensive end, not playing great enough defense to make up for it, Snyder can do something different. If George Hill is getting eaten up, having an off night, Snyder can look for help from a reserve. If Derrick Favors is launching every 15-footer as though he's heaving a 50-pound kettle bell at a rack from across the room, Snyder can go a different way.

That's what having Hayward, Gobert, Hill, Favors, along with Rodney Hood, Boris Diaw, Joe Johnson, Dante Exum, Trey Lyles, Alec Burks, et al., can mean and do.

The major hurdle that would trip all those options up, turning an advantage into a disadvantage, is if egos get in the way of sharing the load and the glory. Skeptics believe this could be an authentic threat — that a young player who has gotten big minutes in the past and who is still trying to make a name for himself will reject the idea of accepting relief either from another young player of a veteran. Or that a veteran who has forgotten the number of times he's been put in clutch situations at the end of games, been counted on to come through — and who has — will not get that same opportunity now.

Besides diligence, and willingness to receive instruction, selflessness will be at the top of the required list for genuine Jazz success. Many think that's impossible to count on in the modern NBA … but not those who play on championship teams. Those great teams often have superstars who pull them through. But too often to number, supporting players have been given chances to contribute — and they've done exactly that.

As mentioned, the Jazz have no superstar. They'll lose the star-to-star battle almost every night. It's a given. They don't have the best. But they may have more better players than any other team in the league. And they're about to attempt to ride that formula to more wins than they've had in a long, long time.

"I'm excited about our players," Snyder said the other day. "But we have work to do."

Short and sweet and … perfect: A mix of enthusiasm, confidence and humility. If the Jazz get that from everybody on the inside, then the high expectations from everyone on the outside will not simply be justified, they will be realized. That requires the overly elasticized stretch of no one's imagination.

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