Gordon Monson: Will Utah ever see another NBA Finals played here? Hope is found in Indy and OKC.

It’s long been a story told, one that lodges straight into the heart of the Jazz’s matter, that so-called small-market teams are disadvantaged in the pursuit of an NBA championship. Even worse is the accompanying tale that that’s exactly the way league managers and manipulators want it. Players don’t want to play under supposedly dimmer lights in less-populated cities, so the thinking goes, and the NBA wants the higher ratings that are said to come with matchups featuring marquee teams.

And then, along comes an NBA Finals that features the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers, teams whose metro areas combined amount, at least by some measures, to an estimated 3.5 million, fewer than half the residents estimated to live in, say, the Dallas-Fort Worth area or the San Francisco Bay Area or the Philadelphia area or the Houston area or the Miami area, and significantly less than the Boston area. We haven’t even mentioned Los Angeles or New York, but the latter of those two pretty much never makes it to the Finals, anyway, so we’ll ignore that one. (Apologies, Knicks fans.)

Players on both the Thunder and the Pacers, though, have commented, in this small-market discussion, that they actually like playing in their respective towns, that the passion and support demonstrated when they succeed is rewarding and something they can positively feel.

That increased passion was overwhelmingly evident in the Salt Lake area way back when the Jazz made the Finals, with fans naming their babies after Jazz players, and sporting flags out their car windows, as though Jazz nation was some kind of breakaway republic.

On a recent panel-discussion show on FS1, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the following:

“That’s one thing I really admire about the NFL. If we were going into a Super Bowl and it was Packers against Steelers, you guys would be celebrating that. Those would be storied franchises. People wouldn’t be talking about the fact that Pittsburgh [and Green Bay are] small markets. I’m happy whatever team ends up in the Finals, but it’s been intentional from our standpoint to create a system, a collective bargaining agreement, that allows more teams to compete.

“We’re going to have to go through a process of getting to the point where people are accustomed to tuning into the Finals because it’s the two teams that deserve to be there and it’s the best basketball. Similar to, again with the Super Bowl, if I ask someone if they’re going to watch the Super Bowl, they wouldn’t ask, ‘Who’s playing?’ It’s a national holiday. That’s Nirvana. I’m not saying we’re anywhere close to that yet. If the Knicks are in the Finals, there’s a segment of our fan base that’s going to watch that may not watch if it’s other teams. My job is to get people to love and follow this game, so that if you’re a huge basketball fan, you should want to tune into the Finals because that’s the best basketball.”

If you believe that, then it’s up to the Jazz to get their stuff together and make a run, as it did a couple of times, as mentioned, in the late ‘90s, a memory that grows more and more distant as the seasons roll by. It may be — no, it is — true that to do so will require greater acumen and some luck, neither of which the Jazz have had in hefty amounts of late.

The Jazz and many of their fans have pointed at OKC as a model for Utah to follow. Anybody actually been to Oklahoma City? It’s fine, but some might say it makes Salt Lake seem like a garden spot. Either way, the Thunder broke down what they had a fistful of years ago, trading two All-Star level players — Paul George and Russell Westbrook — as a means to gather in draft picks and acquire talent. Sound familiar, Jazz fans? That’s precisely what general manager Sam Presti did, rather successfully.

It also sounds, in theory, like what the Jazz really could replicate. But the Thunder did what the Jazz likely can’t: They got a promising young player in trade who grew into an MVP. Although OKC surrounded Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with other key players, he is the centerpiece that made its rise what it’s been. Jalen Williams has helped, as has Lu Dort, Chet Holmgren, among others. The Thunder also added in trade Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein, without forfeiting much of their draft inventory. That means a team that finished with the best record in the league this season might get better than it already is, a team that can score and D-up, and maybe win a title this time around.

Presti has, in fact, outsmarted the rest of the NBA.

Can the Jazz execs?

As for the Pacers, it’s not simply the talent they hauled in their ascent, it’s what they did with it once they got it. Yeah, Indiana acquired Tyrese Haliburton a few seasons ago and built around him, sporting teammates like Pascal Siakam, Myles Turner, Obi Toppin, Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith.

They’ve taken those players and formed them into what amounts to basketball’s version of JiffyPop, its kernels heating and blowing up and out on a red-hot burner, with fast-break chaos erupting here, there, everywhere. They move with advance passes and in the half court. They share the ball. They have created a culture that targets, values and utilizes all rotational players, which is to say their success, while sparked by Haliburton, depends on darn near everyone. They use unique variances of screens in a conceptual attack that trusts the players to instinctually create space and advantages which, again, stirs mayhem, depending on pretty much everyone. And in the modern NBA, that stands apart as being unselfish and because it’s unselfish, it leans toward being cool. When unselfishness on the basketball court becomes cool, then it’s not only effective, it’s a gas to watch.

A lot of people figured beforehand that the Thunder would win this matchup because … well, the thinking is that they’re more talented all around. In Game 1, OKC led throughout until the second when it mattered the most, the game’s last one. A furious comeback by Indy, punctuated by a Haliburton jumper at the end, gave the Pacers a 1-zip edge.

No matter who wins the series, the best thing about these Finals is they should give hope to other teams not located in huge markets, altering the narrative. No telling what the television ratings will end up being, but that doesn’t matter, shouldn’t matter to basketball fans who are drawn in not by and for the showmanship and spectacle around the court, rather by and for what actually happens on it.

The Jazz can study and pay attention to how these teams were made, how they were developed, and how they play, finding their blueprint and their inspiration in that. Everybody else around here can jump in and sit back on the BarcaLounger, order up a plate of ham or turkey or steak sandwiches, grab some chips and a cold beverage, and enjoy basketball played outside of and a long way from Broadway and Hollywood and South Beach, straight from the country’s heartland, places not so different from Utah’s own.

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