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The big bad five games in seven nights road trip is over, and frankly, there's another one NEXT month as well. The Utah Jazz beat the Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks, while losing to the Indiana Pacers, Atlanta Hawks, and Toronto Raptors. How are you feeling about the team? I expected 2-3, with a win NYC. So I'm okay with the end result, the team is playing better and getting road wins. Two things that didn't happen last year.
What did the rest of the world think?
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SB Nation's Drew Garrison has the Jazz -4 from last week:
24. Utah Jazz (4-7, Last week: 20)
The Jazz are about as good as expected. There's signs of a good team every now and then, but this is a young, raw roster. Gordon Hayward is playing up to his contract, but a week with three losses and a buzzer-beating win against the Knicks isn't a good look. Silver lining: they just wrapped up a five-game road trip.
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ESPN's Marc Stein has the Jazz -1 from last week:
20. Utah Jazz (4-7, Last week: 19)
Twenty-one days into the season, Utah has already won two games on buzzer-beaters: Gordon Hayward's tough fallaway to beat LeBron's Cavs at home and Trey Burke's l-o-n-g 2 from the corner Friday night at MSG. The Jazz, over the previous nine seasons, managed just three buzzer-beaters.
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CBS's Matt Moore has the Jazz -5 from last week:
19. Utah Jazz (4-7, Last week: 14)
Their tagline should be "Better than the bad East teams!"
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Sports Illustrated's Matt Dollinger has the Jazz -4 from last week:
21. Utah Jazz (4-7, Last week 17)
Trey Burke's buzzer-beater against the Knicks was a rarity. It's not that the Jazz guard isn't clutch, it's just that he hasn't hit a lot of shots. A member of Ben Golliver's All-Brick Layers Team, Burke is shooting just 24.1 percent from deep and 32 percent from the field.
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NBA.com's John Schuhmann has the Jazz -2 from last week:
22. Utah Jazz (4-7, Last week 20)
Pace: 92.6 (29), OffRTG: 105.9 (10), DefRTG: 110.4 (28), NetRTG: -4.5 (23)
Trey Burke's heroics in New York salvaged a 2-3 trip, but it could have been 3-2 if the Jazz scored more than nine points in the fourth quarter in Atlanta. The offense has been pretty poor whenever Gordon Hayward has sat down, but the defense has been a bigger issue. According to SportVU, only the Lakers have been worse at defending pick-and-rolls.
This week: vs. OKC, @ GSW, vs. NOP
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So, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 24. It's hard not to expect a drop after having an objectively so-so week. As a team that doesn't win much on the road (or at all, if you look at last year's 25 win campaign), I obviously feel like we didn't do too poorly.