Utah Jazz at Washington Wizards: Keys to the Game

The Utah Jazz have a chance to reverse their fate against the NBA’s top teams as they take on the rising Washington Wizards in tomorrow’s road contest.

It’s crazy to think that with just 24 games left in the 2016-17 NBA season, there’s still a team that the Utah Jazz have left to play. However that just so happens to be the case with the squad they’ll take on tomorrow as they’ll visit the Washington Wizards in a Sunday matinee contest.

And for the Wizards, this year has certainly been a tale of two halves given that they started the season extremely poorly and looked like they were going to be nothing but a massive disappointment. However, head coach Scott Brooks has gotten things turned around in a big way as the surging Wizards now find themselves in third place in the Eastern Conference.

Given that the Jazz struggled mightily against both the second place and fourth place teams in the East, namely the Boston Celtics and Toronto Raptors, the fact that Washington has moved up into that upper echelon with them is potentially not a good sign for the Jazz.

However, while the Jazz came out of the All-Star break on a high note by quite easily defeating the Milwaukee Bucks last night, the Wizards apparently came out with a bit of a hangover from their time off as they fell to the Philadelphia 76ers last night on the road.

That could either mean good news for the Jazz if that lull carries over to tomorrow’s contest, or it could be bad news as a potentially angry Wizards team may snap back to reality and redeem themselves against a tough Utah squad.

Regardless of what the case is, much like every game in the season’s final stretch, this is an extremely important one for the Jazz. Not only do they need every win they can get to stay above the Clippers in the standings, but given their season-long struggles against the top teams in the league, a win over a powerhouse such as the Wizards would be a nice confidence builder and could provide a critical boost for Tuesday’s showdown against divisional rival OKC.

Quite frankly, while Washington’s backcourt duo of John Wall and Bradley Beal is an impressive pair and the rest of their starters are pretty solid as well, the biggest downfall for Washington this season has been their lackluster bench. They did pull off a trade to bring in Bojan Bogdanovic to help shore up their second unit, but overall Utah has them thoroughly outmatched in terms of depth.

Therefore, despite the Wizards being a potentially difficult opponent, the Jazz should still be in good shape as long as they take care of business in the following areas.