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I can't believe there are only nine more games this season, it hasn't flown by, but this Utah Jazz season seems to be a prelude to greatness. But there's a lot of work to do still, especially at this site. The Jazz play the Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets, Phoenix Suns, and Sacramento Kings. All of them are lotto teams, and by that token, we're all in the same boat. Some are trying to win, some are trying to lose. The hard thing is that this season the Jazz are still a team that can beat the best, and lose to the worst.
Yeah, for reals, these games are going to be harder than the relative value of the individual teams' records. Minnesota just beat the Jazz, in Utah. There should be some level of payback. Zach LaVine, Andrew Wiggins, Adreian Payne, Gorgui Dieng and company are all young guys who are exciting to watch and have nothing to lose. The team lost to them because we couldn't stop their threes down the stretch, and tried to play their game. Utah needs to use that discipline they should have by now in order to beat greener teams than them. The next game, the only one at home, should follow that script as well as Denver beat up on our team. Denver's players all seem happier to be playing right now, and showed it when we last played them. Jameer Nelson, Randy Foye, and Ty Lawson all got their points against our poor perimeter defense. Hopefully our guys D them up, beyond those guys I'm not really scared of Danilo Gallinari or Wilson Chandler.
The last two games, our last "more-than-one-game-long" road trip is also our second to last double header of the season. We lost to the Suns on a night when one of the Morris brothers (I honestly don't know if it was Markieff Morris or Marcus Morris, I have trouble telling them apart) went off. Eric Bledsoe is the last point guard standing on that team, but like LaVine or Lawson, he's capable of manhandling our defense.
For me the most interesting sequence left this season is the home and home series against the Kings. It's hard to win both of these games, we've proven that over time even with the Kings (losing in Utah, then beating them in Sacramento). The first game, an away game, is the second night of a back to back, and the last game this week.
The trouble is figuring out which Utah Jazz team will show up on each night. There's a chance for our team to still reach 35+ wins, they are at 32 right now. It is possible, probable even, for them to go 3-1 next week.
For our sake I hope they do.