Karalis: Utah Jazz show how far Boston has to go to be elite

If you've ever bought a knock-off anything, like Sorny electronics or Armoni clothing, you can convince yourself that if you squint a little, it looks just like the real thing.

That is, until you see the real thing.

The Boston Celtics have looked better recently, and in some stretches, they look downright great. But the Utah Jazz are clearly the real deal. It's obvious how much better they are at the game than the Celtics.

For example, please feast your eyes on this incredible display of basketball.

[embed]https://twitter.com/utahjazz/status/1371991504143613952[/embed]

This is just gorgeous. It's basketball perfection.

Let's run this whole thing down. In less than 10 seconds, Utah whipped off six passes, drove the ball and touched the paint twice, and hit a straight-on 3-pointer.

For most of those 10 seconds, the Celtics were moving and recovering nicely. But each pass, each attack, bent the defense just a little bit more. By the end, the quick decisions and ball movement got one of their best shooters a look at a 3-pointer without a defender within eight feet of him.

"It’s the best. It’s the best," Brad Stevens gushed after the game. "You’re in the right spot, you’re spaced great, you play with a high motor, and then it’s just a simple game."

The Jazz are a model for quick, efficient offense in today's NBA. They have all the ingredients to make this recipe work. It also shows how far Boston really is from being this good.

Utah has their star players in Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, both of whom were their own draft picks. They have a free agent signing that's paying off in Bojan Bogdanovic. They have a veteran player they traded making a huge impact in Mike Conley. Joe Ingles was signed after he was cut by the Clippers and he blossomed in the right role. Jordan Clarkson is a reclamation project from Cleveland who is going from the butt of jokes to the presumptive Sixth Man of the Year. Royce O'Neale was undrafted and signed out of Europe, and now he might be the NBA's ultimate "glue guy."

Their coach, Quinn Snyder, is now in his seventh season, and he recently made a big adjustment to their style of play that has unlocked everything.

Basically, they've hit on just about every move they've made. And most of all, everyone on the team knows what their role is, and each adheres to the Belichickian principle "do your job."

The Celtics also have two homegrown stars in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Marcus Smart can count a third drafted high-impact player. Their attempts at trading for the huge impact guy have fallen short, though Kemba Walker could still become that guy if his knee stays healthy. Their last two attempts at impact free agent signings are now on other teams.

It's not exactly the same.

Their coach, Stevens, is in his eighth season, and is chasing the kind of offensive execution the Jazz display on a nightly basis. It's his white whale, and it, too, may drag him to the bottom of the basketball abyss.

"(Utah is) one of the best that I’ve seen - and I said this before when we played them there - at making the right decision every time," Stevens said. "As good as I’ve seen in the NBA in my time as far as a team goes at making that right decision."

Stevens can play a loop of Utah's offensive possessions in the next film sessions and ask his guys to try to copy it, but the Celtics don't have the right personnel or mentality to make it happen right now.

Part of what made that Jazz possession was great is who was on the floor. Gobert started it all with a blocked shot. Conley got it to Ingles, who swung it to Mitchell, who passed it to Bogandovic, who drove and kicked it to Ingles again, and then it went to Conley on the other side of the floor, and then back to Ingles. All the while, Gobert is begging for a lob and demanding defensive attention.

Semi Ojeleye is having a good shooting season, but a defender can close out hard on him because he's not driving the closeout and making teams pay off the dribble very often. Neither is Grant Williams, or just about anyone off the Celtics bench.  And their young stars, Tatum and Brown, aren't quite as quick in their decision-making.

"I think we do have a tendency to make the game more difficult at times," Stevens said. "We don’t read it as quickly right now, and that’s where you hope to get to. ... They’ve got a number of excellent decision-makers with the ball. I mean, we were talking before the game, obviously Mitchell and Conley are two of the best pick-and-roll players in the league, but nobody talks about it, but Ingles is one of the best pick-and-roll shooters and passers in the league and has been for years. They just have a lot of guys who make that quick read and then they’re spaced so well."

This all isn't to say the Celtics can't get there. Brown and Tatum are still young, and they are relied upon to do the bulk of the scoring. The workload is high for them, and everything they do right now is about assessing their probability of scoring first, and passing it second.

The Jazz whip the ball around partly because anyone who shoots it has a very good chance at making it. It's the exact egalitarian offense Stevens dreams of, but the construction of his team won't allow. Still his team has to keep trying to build that habit.

"It's something that we have to do more of. It's not the movement, it's the timing," Brown said. " We probably have to get it out of our hands quicker. Half a second can make the biggest difference. Making the right play, right on time is important for us. I know I've gotten better at that as the season has gone on and I'm going to continue to get better at it. We have to continue to get better as a team."

Eventually, if Danny Ainge does his job right, Boston will also have pieces who can be trusted to take more of the shots. And even though Tatum and Brown need to continue scoring half of Boston's points this season, the goal is to eventually lighten their workload and let them do their shot-hunting down the stretch of games.

That's not happening this season. As the Jazz proved in this game, the Celtics have a long way to go to get where they want to be.