Utah Jazz: [Another] New Chapter - The Downbeat #1557

WE WERE WAY OFF!

Me (twice):

As for the Jazz? I'm standing behind my prediction, even in light of the Kanter news.

• The Jazz will do nothing.

(Though, I did leave myself a bit of an out)

There's still potential for there to be a flurry of activity with just 2 games separating teams 3-7 and just 1.5 games between the teams fighting for the 8th spot in the Western Conference playoffs.

Amar:

I think the deadline will be mostly quiet. Some players will get waived, there will be a few trades, but no blockbusters as far as I can tell.

Regardless of what you thought of all the trades (What in the HELL was Milwaukee thinking? Yeesh) the explosion of trades in the final hour of the deadline was SO MUCH FUN. Whether you were following on Twitter, here at SLC Dunk, the radio, whatever, the chaos made for one of the most memorable Deadline Days ever. Eat your heart out European football winter transfer window.

Now that everything is wrapped up with the trades (For the most part. Perkins bought out, Kanter with two games in an OKC jersey under his belt),  we can finally move on and look forward. The game against the Blazers on Friday night was the perfect way to do it. Yes, the big man rotation is THIN (Amar has some ideas on that), but Booker stepped up, and we even had a Jeremy Evans sighting (+23 in 12:00!!).

Rudy did this:

(Sorry, just had to watch that another 341 times)

'Was too tight with the 400mm, but Gobert's outlet to Booker for the slam was sooo nice. @aaronfalk #PORatUTA @sltrib pic.twitter.com/L6NfLU7LTo

— Scott Sommerdorf (@ScottSommerdorf) February 22, 2015

The best part of the Blazers game? Trey hitting all those little floaters:

If he can hit those at even a 50% rate, he will become a much more efficient player.

Four. Four years ago today:

Utah has agreed to trade All-Star point guard Deron Williams to Nets in multi-player package, Yahoo! Sports has learned. Deal is done.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) February 23, 2011

So much has happened since then... especially when you consider that one of the fruits of that trade was the pick that yielded Kanter.

Ready to see some wins? Throughout the season we've been revisiting the schedule to see where the Jazz are in relation to last year, and predictions for this year. Most would love to see 35+ wins. Here's some good news if you're in that boat:

Updated remaining West strength of schedule (more details here: http://t.co/YBNKU2h9aj). Toughest at the top. pic.twitter.com/cxOd15RcZK

— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) February 23, 2015

That's right. The Jazz have the easiest remaining schedule in the Western Conference. In order to reach 35 wins, they'd need to go 15-13 the rest of the way.