Can the Utah Jazz replicate its defense of a season ago?

Last spring, when Rudy Gobert's arms seemed to intimidate every shot they didn't block, and Gordon Hayward lurked on the weak side, ready to break on a bad pass and turn it into a dunk, and Elijah Millsap harassed opponents without apology, the Utah Jazz were a nightmare for opponents.

Or was it all a dream?

General manager Dennis Lindsey has been evaluating, his analytics team has been crunching numbers, and, for the purposes of this metaphor, the Jazz have been pinching themselves while trying to answer the question that might define the team's success going forward: How good is this defense really?

"It's safe to say we at least developed an identity, something that we can capitalize on," Lindsey said as his team opened training camp this week. "But I'm as interested as anybody to see. Are we going to be a pretty good team defensively? Or are we going to be unique?"

You've heard about how the Jazz closed last season.

Utah, the worst defense in the NBA the year before, started off slow but went 19-10 after the All-Star break and had the best defense in the NBA over that stretch. Over those final 29 games, the Jazz allowed 94.8 points per 100 possessions (otherwise known as a defensive rating of 94.8), according to the NBA's stats. The next best defense during that time, the Memphis Grizzlies, allowed 4.6 points more.

And if you don't think that's a significant gap, know this: the Jazz lost 18 games last season by five points or fewer.

But can the Jazz do it again this year? In all likelihood, no. Not to that level.

The best defensive team in the league last season, the eventual champion Golden State Warriors, had a defensive rating of 98.2 over the course of the full season. If the Jazz somehow kept up their post All-Star pace for an entire campaign, it would be the best defensive performance since the 2003-04 San Antonio Spurs won 57 games.

It stands to reason there will be some slippage over a full season. Nevertheless, the Jazz like their foundation.

"It's something that we can continue to build on," said forward Derrick Favors. "We were a pretty good defensive team after the All-Star break. You just do the hard work, the type of work we did in practice [and] it's something we can improve on. Keep getting better until we are the best defensive team in the NBA."

Favors, who stands at 6-foot-10, is a crucial component to Utah's defense. His speed and athleticism for his size has given head coach Quin Snyder the confidence to play him against smaller, faster forwards and keep the Jazz lineup big as the NBA continues to trend toward small-ball.

In fact, with 6-foot-6 Dante Exum starting at point guard and 7-foot-1 Gobert blocking 189 shots at the center position, no team had a bigger starting five than Utah's late last year. The Jazz, however, will be without Exum this year thanks to an ACL tear he suffered while playing for Australia over the summer. That leaves a cast of smaller point guards to fill the hole.

"We're just going to have to have other guys pick it up for him," Hayward said. "You can't really pick up his length or some of his speed on the defensive end, but the system will stay the same. The principles will stay the same."

Jazz officials don't point to a single catalyst for the team's defensive turnaround. The progress, as quickly as it came, was still gradual; Utah's defensive numbers improved every month of the season, save a slight uptick in April.

But there's no question that Gobert's insertion into the starting lineup full time, following Enes Kanter's trade to Oklahoma City, helped accelerate things. Gobert will enter the season as an early favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year, as he again anchors the paint. His presence helps erase other defensive mistakes.

But the Jazz also point to their ability to better keep opponents out of the paint and their increased aggression leading to steals (8.7 per game after the All-Star break were good for seventh-most in the league) as reasons for their defensive success.

Entering his second season as head coach, Snyder is expecting teams to better game plan for his team and is working to install tweaks and counters to his schemes. Still, Snyder said his top priority remains focusing on the basics.

"It's like riding a bike," he said. "Hopefully you don't forget how to do it. But if you haven't done it for a long time, you may have to put the chain back on, the seat might be too low, it's rusty, your tires are flat. We need to get our bike back in shape."

Early reports out of training camp have been largely positive in that regard, and the Jazz will get their first test run on Sunday when they open preseason play against the Los Angeles Lakers on the campus of the University of Hawaii.

The Jazz will play a total of eight preseason games over the next four weeks, before opening the season Oct. 28 at Detroit. That's when the Jazz will start to answer one of their biggest questions.

"Can we replicate that to that degree over 82 games, with injuries and other teams making changes?" Lindsey wondered aloud this week. "We'll see. But we very much look forward to the competition to measure ourselves."

afalk@sltrib.com

Twitter: @tribjazz