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Time to Build Some Jazz Momentum- Downbeat #1834

By JuMu
Onward! Push towards the playoffs you injury-ravaged team! ONWARD!
Onward! Push towards the playoffs you injury-ravaged team! ONWARD!
Jeff Swinger-USA TODAY Sports

Jazz are back to making that back to the playoff-push!

The Jazz have the chance to get their longest winning streak of the season tonight at home versus the longtime Eastern Conference foe Chicago Bulls.

It may only be a potential winning streak of 3 on the line, but goshdarnit the Jazz need to start gaining some momentum before these other poser teams fighting for 8th in the West think they have a chance against our boss squad.

The Jazz play 4 games this week starting with:

Tonight's matchup against the Bulls at 7 PM

Wednesday vs. the Nuggets at 7 PM

Friday vs. the Bucks at 7 PM

Saturday at the Suns at 7 PM

Our team is starting to gain more and more strength as we have our borderline all star big 3 frontcourt in Hayward, Favors, and Gobert all starting to play more games together again. You can see the difference in this team's tone once all 3 of these guys are back to playing together for a squad that frankly needs all 3 of them to be healthy to be a formidable team.


The Jazz have weathered more injuries this year than in any other Jazz year I can think of in recent memory, but it's not all grey clouds yet, the West is historically weak and the Jazz still have a high likelihood of the 7th or 8th seed this year to get some much-needed playoff experience for this squad.

The injuries have also allowed the promising Lyles and Withey to accrue much more experience than they would have otherwise.

Hood has also shouldered a larger load than many of us would have guessed and now a vocal minority would even value Hood higher than Hayward for some reason.

I love this squad, I'm not convinced they'll make much noise in the playoffs this season, but if they can keep most of this core together for at least a few years, we're going to see some fun playoff series with this team.

WojBomb!!!!!!!!!!

Wow! Who would have guessed after Hornacek's near coach of the year performance in his rookie season as a head coach that he would be fired a year and a half later. Pardon my french, but what a cruddy organization Phoenix has been running lately.

They had a very fun team to watch to help feed my NBA addiction when the last season of the Jazz's last head coach was the least fulfilling one in memory. And now, less than 2 seasons later have come full circle and look to be that terrible team that everyone was projecting to be the worst team in the West back in the 2013-14 season.

2 other thoughts about this news:

1. If I'm Jazz management, I'm on the phone with Hornacek this morning heavily gauging his interest in a return to our team's bench as an assistant.

2. Earl Watson has a highly plausible chance for being the interim coach for the Suns. With all the blaming and scapegoating that has been going on there, Watson is now one of the highest men left standing in the coaching staff, being one of the top 2 assistants left in the firesale. I'm curious to see who Suns management goes with.

Here are the current playoff odds according to ESPN and Basketball-reference:

Source: ESPN

Source: Basketball-Reference

The Jazz still are somehow on the right side of the 50-50 chances of making the playoffs according to these projections, here's to hoping that the Jazz can leapfrog back up the standings like these projections say.

Jazz powerhouse blogger Amar has put out (as usual) more awesome Jazz posts in the last 24 hours go ahead and do yourself a favor and read ALL OF THEM!

Western Conference Blueprint -- 50 Wins of bust?

Phoenix Suns fire head coach Jeff Hornacek

The Utah Jazz are taking and making more threes than ever before

Utah Jazz are still worth listening to

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