OverTime: So, How Hot Can the Utah Jazz Get?

Photo courtesy of Deseret News.

The Jazz are hot enough to secure home court advantage in the West. But will they?

The Utah Jazz are currently 36-26, good enough for 6th place in the overcrowded Western Conference, and with only 20 games left in the regular season, there's very little wiggle room both up and down. A single hot or cold streak could be all it takes for them - and pretty much any team in the West, save for the Pelicans, Mavericks, Suns, and Grizzlies - to either make or miss the playoffs. But for the Jazz, making the playoffs seems inevitable, it's simply a matter of which spot in the top 8 they'll secure. 

The top 2 spots out West are tightly held by the Warriors (44-19) and Nuggets (42-20), but after Golden State and Denver, there's only a 4 game difference between the 3rd seed and the last seed for the playoffs. And with the Jazz in 6th, the only teams above them are the Thunder (3rd), Trailblazers (4th), and Rockets (5th). So, it becomes an issue of climbing those few games and breaking into the top 4 by April, thus securing home court advantage. And while I haven't watched a live basketball game in over a month (which is - and I can't stress this enough - killing me), I can absolutely see the Jazz climbing to that 3rd seed, and maybe - just maybe - even the 2nd seed. Here's how.

Utah's road map to postseason success all begins with their remaining schedule and the schedules of their conference competitors. This is where the Jazz will, for what feels like the first time this season, catch a break. Of the remaining games, the Jazz have the easiest schedule of all 30 teams. The average record of their remaining opponents is .412, which makes it mostly teams that have won much fewer than half of their games. For example, 3 of the last 20 games Utah play are against the Phoenix Suns who have a 13-51 record. That's 13 wins and 51 losses. 51. Let that sink in. And while the Suns are the supreme example of an easy opponent, it should be noted that the Jazz are 20-7 against opponents under .500 on the season. If those are too many numbers for you, what's important to take away is that the Jazz are extremely good against bad teams, and the rest of their season is comprised of games against bad teams, hoping to tank as hard as possible for a shot at Zion.

However, the Jazz still do have games against good, over .500 teams, of course. They still have match-ups against the Nuggets, Clippers, and Thunder to come, all of which are good, playoff teams. (Or at least the Clippers hope to be. They're currently holding on to that last spot.) Utah also has games against the Lakers and Kings to come, both of which straddle that .500 line and playoff berth. These are good teams, for sure, but they aren't too much for the Jazz to handle. Since returning from the All-Star break, the Jazz have only lost 1 game, and it was a double-overtime loss by 1 point to Oklahoma City, a Western Conference Finals contender run by 2 of the top 10 players in the league. Since then, they've gone undefeated, putting up some major wins against the Nuggets, Mavericks, Clippers, and even the Bucks last night. It should be noted that the Bucks have the best record in the NBA, only having lost 14 games before Utah's comeback win. This stretch is reminiscent of what the Jazz were able to do in the second half of last season, finishing off the last 3 months with a 26-6 record. Sure, it takes time for Utah to heat up in the regular season, but once they get hot, it's nearly impossible to stop them, even for the best teams in the NBA.

Of course, it's going to take more than the Jazz being great for them to secure home court advantage - it's going to require some of those teams above them to slip. And while all 5 teams ahead of them have been great, a slip can very easily happen for some. The Rockets are only sitting 1 game ahead of Utah, and that's been exclusively because of James Harden's offensive heroics. His unprecedented explosion shot the Rockets into the playoff picture after a disappointing start, but now that Chris Paul and Clint Capela are back from injuries, it looks like Harden might cool off a little bit, hoping to save something for the playoffs (where he has a history of failing to step up to the plate). Gaining on the Rockets shouldn't be a problem for Utah.

Two games ahead of the Jazz and holding the last playoff spot with home court advantage are the Portland Trailblazers. Now, I have nothing good or bad to say about the Trailblazers. I have a long history of putting them down. I think they are generally all bark and no bite, especially come April, and there's plenty of evidence to support my theory, not the least of which is them being swept by the 6th seeded Pelicans in the first round of the playoffs last season. I don't know if Portland will slip in this final stretch. My natural inclination is to say yes, but I generally don't think they will. They've been an excellent regular season team, Damian Lillard is playing at an All-NBA Second Team level, and their remaining schedule is neither difficult nor easy. I wouldn't be surprised if Utah ended with a similar or better record than Portland.

Above Portland, clawing into the upper echelons of the Western Conference (but only 3 games ahead of Utah), are the OKC Thunder, the Jazz's conference rival in recent years. If the playoffs started today, the Jazz and Thunder would play each other in the first round, as they did last year. That was easily one of the best first round match-ups last year, a series in which the Jazz won, and February's double-overtime game in Oklahoma just reignited the teams' rivalry, a game in which (as previously mentioned) OKC won. Now, I could expound on how there's no way the Thunder are going to fall out of the 3rd spot. In fact, in many ways, it looks as if the only way the Thunder are going is up. Westbrook is averaging a triple-double with wiggle room (22-11-11) and Paul George is a top 3 MVP contender. They boast a top 5 defense and there is (always) the chance that Andre Roberson could return by the end of the season. Roberson was an All-Defensive 2nd Team player the last season he competed in 2017. All of this points to nothing short of a conference semi-final for the Thunder. And yet... you'd never guess which team has the hardest remaining schedule.

Yeah. It's Oklahoma. In their remaining 20 games, the Thunder will be facing teams with an average record of .564. They still have 2 match-ups with Toronto to come, as well games against the Warriors, Nuggets, Lakers, Pacers, Rockets, and Bucks. OH! And the Jazz. It should also be noted that since their double-overtime win against Utah, they haven't won a single game. Of course a cold streak isn't an ice age quite yet, but with only a month or so left of the regular season, the Thunder can't afford to let it become one. And even if/when they break their streak, the tough schedule and tough losses might just be enough to have their record dip below the easy record the Jazz will be acquiring in the same period.

So, this leads me all to the rising star of the Western Conference, the mountain-high ball club sitting 6 games ahead of Utah and only 1.5 games behind the best record in the West: the Denver Nuggets. I've showed how the Jazz can break into the top 3, but can the stars align for them? Is it possible, in only 20 games, for the Jazz to snatch a top 2 record, something the Warriors and Nuggets have basically had locked down the entire season? I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. The Nuggets are extremely talented and have all the motivation in the world to, not only make the playoffs, but to go for the 1st seed. I don't think we'll catch the Nuggets slipping in that regard, despite the fact that they have 1 of the 10 hardest remaining schedules. Honestly, the only way the Utah Jazz squeak by the Nuggets is if Denver's schedule gets the better of them, which is totally possible. But it seems unlikely.

At the end of the season, when the playoffs begin in mid-April, I think it is highly likely we'll be looking at a Utah team in the top 4, if not the top 3, not too far behind the Nuggets. Maybe, if the Jazz threw together a 20-0 run or something close to that, they could steal a top 2 seed from the Warriors or Nuggets, though it doesn't seem likely. But, that's fine. They don't have to steal a top 2 spot. They're already good enough to get home court advantage and make a strong push deep into the playoffs. Hell, depending on playoff match-ups, we might even see them in the Western Conference Finals. Honestly, there's no shortage to what this Utah team can do when they heat up, and believe me, they're hot.