Utah Jazz & Portland Trail Blazers
Although the Portland Trail Blazers haven’t exactly been monumental this season and actually find themselves a game out of the playoff picture, they are still a longtime division rival of the Utah Jazz and the two teams have given basketball fans some extremely entertaining and tense games over the past few seasons.
In 2014-15, three of the teams’ four contests were decided by five or fewer points and the games have gone both ways with Utah coming out on top in some and Portland stealing the win in others.
Plus the divisional rivalry of these two opponents always seems to create a fun atmosphere as both squads are quite familiar with one another. Also, while Portland may be out of the playoff picture for the moment, with studs such as Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum on their team, I fully expect them to get things turned around and once they do, the Jazz and Blazers could be in fierce contention for playoff seeding late in the season.
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Setting up that intensity with a Christmas Day game would likely result in an exhilarating match-up for all kinds of basketball fans. Much more exhilarating, anyway, than watching a struggling Lakers team take on a Clippers team missing its best two players in Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, which is what we got this year.
While the injuries obviously couldn’t have been foreseen and the LA match-up definitely attracted a lot of eyeballs from a big market, if we’re strictly speaking quality of basketball, then I think there’s plenty of folks who would agree with me that featuring the Jazz would lead to a much more competitive game than what the Lakers typically could have mustered against a full-strength Clippers squad.
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So while it comes as no surprise, it’s still somewhat disappointing that the Utah Jazz once again weren’t featured among the Christmas Day games despite working to prove themselves as a top Western Conference team and one of the more enjoyable and competitive squads to watch.
It’s an uphill battle if the small market Utah team is determined to get a chance to play on Christmas, but I don’t think it’s much of a stretch at all to say that these three match-ups featuring the Jazz that I mentioned would have been significantly more exciting than three of the five games we were treated to on Christmas Day.
Hopefully, a good second half of the season and a strong playoff push will transfer the Jazz over to the “Nice List” for next year and they can finally find themselves once again taking the national stage among the NBA’s marquee Christmas games.