After the Utah Jazz won 29 of their last 35 games in the 2017-18 season, NBA fans wondered if they were real, if the success was viable. Utah was the hottest team in the league post All-Star break and then picked up a convincing series win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of the playoffs last spring. Instead of shaking things up, the Jazz bet on themselves to keep the good times rolling into the 2018-19 season.

The sample size wasn’t kidding – the Jazz were elite and could hang with the best. However, the skeptics weren’t kidding either – by keeping the same core, is the success sustainable?

One such critic, Shaun Powell of NBA.com, brings up the 2016 Portland Trail Blazers as a comparison for what the Jazz are, and could be.

“In 2016, the young Portland Trail Blazers made the playoffs, stunning the LA Clippers in the first round before giving the Golden State Warriors a feisty series in the semis,” Powell wrote just before Utah opened training camp. “Encouraged by the bounce and swagger showed by an emerging club, the Blazers handed out contract extensions and… they haven’t done anything special since. In hindsight, every one of those extensions look like a mistake.

“The lesson: Fool’s gold can sometimes, um, fool you. Are the Jazz headed down that path?”

Powell has a valid point: the Jazz have swagger and the scent of success on the edge of their noses. They’ve had it; they can replicate it. On top of that, like Portland, the Jazz returned their core which could limit their overall ceiling. In the summer of 2018, the Jazz mirrored that Portland offseason and resigned two key players – Derrick Favors and Dante Exum – to deals that may not be worthwhile down the road. New additions? Rookie Grayson Allen, that’s it. Based on the offseason, did the Jazz stagnate?

However, it’s easy to argue the other side to this conversation. Would you rather have a team that knows and trusts each other or a team like Houston who lost key contributors and defenders? Yes, the Los Angeles Lakers added LeBron James, but they also added a bench of kazoos. Would you take the Jazz to have a better regular season record or that LA team that is young and trying to mesh with their ball-dominant superhero named LBJ? New Orleans brings forward a retooled team as do the San Antonio Spurs. Why might Denver actually crack into the playoffs? They are running back their main dudes.

Continuity, in this writer’s opinion, is what puts the Jazz in the discussion as a top-three Western Conference team alongside the Golden State Warriors (who return their All-Stars and know their roles, system) and the Oklahoma City Thunder (who return their All-Stars and know their roles, system).