PORTLAND — The Utah Jazz currently have the worst defensive rating in the NBA (122). If they finish the season that way, it would be the third straight year with the dishonor of having the worst defense in the league.

Of course, there are some caveats that are necessary to point out. Like the fact that this team has been bad by design and built, in large part, to lose games. And, there has been an emphasis on getting offensively gifted players and fostering their development.

It’s also important to point out the lack of Walker Kessler this season and the amount that the Jazz have to try to cover up for what he provides on defense. But even with Kessler, a good defensive player, the last couple of years the Jazz’s overall defense has been very bad.

On offense, the team is generally trending in the right direction — the Jazz had the 7th best offensive rating for games played in December. The emergence of Keyonte George as a massive scoring threat helps that.

“It’s crazy, for how good our offense has been, how little we actually talk about it as a group,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “Defense is what we’re attacking every day, and it’s what we’ll continue to attack until we get it right.”

Personnel

It’s not like the Jazz players haven’t been continuously told that they need to be better on that side of the ball. They know where they’ve ranked and they know where they are now compared to the other 29 teams.

But, do the Jazz actually have the personnel to play good defense in the NBA?

“I think any group of people can perform to a certain level,” Hardy said when asked that question. “I don’t want to put a limitation on our group at all on that side of the ball. If I didn’t believe in the ability for a group of people to outperform the sum of their parts, or if I didn’t believe in the ability for individuals to grow and get better, then this would be a horrible profession for me. I go to bed with that belief. I wake up with that belief.”

You’ll notice that wasn’t a “yes.”

The Jazz’s point-of-attack defense has been abysmal throughout the rebuild. George has improved this season, but not to the point that he has been a good defender. Statistically he’s still been a negative defender, along with Isaiah Collier, Brice Sensabaugh, Cody Williams and Kyle Filipowski.

The Jazz are hopeful that Ace Bailey can become a positive defender, but he’s still so young and is still trying to adjust to being in the NBA. His growth on defense is something to worry about in the years to come. There’s some grace that Filipowski deserves considering how much he’s been playing the five this season, where he is known to have deficiencies as a defender.

There’s a lot of hope riding on Hendricks, who was drafted in large part because of his defense, but lost last year to injury and has yet to recover the reaction time or quickness required to be the kind of defender the Jazz need at his position.

Some of the Jazz’s best defenders this season (and that’s not saying much) have been Svi Mykhailiuk, Kyle Anderson and Jusuf Nurkić, and those are not the players that the Jazz desperately need to see defensive improvement from.

The future

At some point in the near future, the Utah Jazz are going to have to face the fact that they have a major problem on defense.

“Defense is tiring. Defense is not fun,” Hardy said. “But defense is what gives you the opportunity to win. We can’t show up to the games thinking that we’re just going to outscore everybody. That’s an unsustainable approach. And right now, where we are as a team and as a program, we’re trying to build sustainable habits, a sustainable approach for long term success. Our focus on the defensive side of the ball, individually, has to go up.”

It’s not like the Jazz’s defense needs to be better to win games this season. We all know that’s not the ultimate goal of the front office. But if they were to try to win games next season with this exact roster, the defense would be a problem.

And there’s blame to go around. The Jazz front office has not drafted defensively sound players, Hardy has not been head coach of a good defensive team, and the players on the team have not shown that they care enough on that side of the ball or that they can improve to a reasonable level.

It’s possible that with winning being the goal, the players would care more, that Hardy would coach differently, that players would buy in, etc. But that’s not concrete evidence for us to work with right now.

On Monday night they gave up 137 points to the Portland Trail Blazers, a bottom-10 offensive team. It was just the latest, in a multi-year string of poor defensive outings. The Jazz’s defensive issues are not going away anytime soon. So something has to change if the Jazz want to be a good team in the future.

Steve Deitz walks with the energy of a coach; however, he does not hide that he and his team are digital nerds and storytellers who specialize in large-scale visual content and software development. More specifically, the 48-year-old makes a living creating the wow factor at his agency, “900lbs.”

“We started the company working for the Dallas Mavericks, telling large-scale visual content on the Jumbotron, and next thing you know, Activision, Blizzard calls,” he said. “We get to work in the Perot Museum on the biggest  exhibit in the museum, and then fast-forward another 12 years, and here we are now.”

His current project is wrapping up in the nation’s capital — sorta. Since Dec.31, projections of America’s story have been given to his agency.

“We’re telling the story of the 250-year birthday of America in the biggest way possible on the facade of the Washington Monument on all four sides,” Deitz said.

He said they started testing out the results a couple of nights before New Year’s Eve. Scenes from Thomas Edison’s light bulb, the Empire State Building, the Model T Ford, and the Industrial Revolution, to name a few, are projected onto the Washington Monument.

Deitz gives his team a ton of credit from the moment he received the call about the project. He also thinks back to the times when he was an athlete who loved to draw in Merkel, Texas. The kid who dared to dream beyond the city limits and outside of the box. The CEO is giving advice to that child who may need a little inspiration.

“Hard work, perseverance, dedication, surround yourself with a team of brilliant people that are way smarter than you, and do the best you possibly can,” he said.

Deitz said there is a likelihood his team’s creations will return to the nation’s capital this year.