Utah Jazz Week Twenty-Two Outlook, Predictions

The Utah Jazz need to have a great week if they hope to put the disappointments of recent losses behind them and continue to assert themselves as the deserving fourth seed in the Western Conference.

The Utah Jazz are at it again. After putting together a solid stretch of games which saw them knock off the Houston Rockets, the Los Angeles Clippers and the Detroit Pistons, it appears that the team is officially back in slump mode.

Sure, it’s only a two-game losing streak so far, but the never-ending seesaw of winning streaks and losing streaks that the Jazz have put up this season has been and continues to be a major irritant. Part of it is just the way basketball goes, but aside from that, the cold, hard truth is that the Jazz have been extremely inconsistent this season.

Last week’s loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers really wasn’t all that unexpected. Even though Utah had their chances to win, playing on the second night of a back-to-back on the road against LeBron James certainly isn’t a favorable situation.

That one I can excuse. The loss last night to the Chicago Bulls, however, I cannot.

Coming in off a day of rest while the Bulls were playing in the second night of a back-to-back, one might have expected Utah to look refreshed and energized. That was actually the case for about the game’s first six minutes as the Jazz built a quick 12-point lead in the first quarter.

Unfortunately, from there it was Utah who looked like the team who was coming in on the second night of a back-to-back rather than the Bulls and the Jazz ultimately fell to Chicago to finish the week at 2-2 and drop their overall record to 43-27.

Last week I had actually predicted the Jazz to go 2-2 myself, but I figured they would beat the Bulls and lose to the Clippers. Since I got those two wrong, but the loss to Cleveland and the win over Detroit right, I managed to match Utah’s record of 2-2 and thus remain slightly ahead of them with a prediction record of 45-25.

Nevertheless, while the week started out on an absolute high note, no matter how you look at it, it ended up pretty disappointing. Therefore, as Utah faces a three-game slate this week made up of alternating road and home games, hopefully they will be able to come away with a more encouraging finish than they did last week.

With just 12 games left in the season, it’s going to be tough for the Jazz to reach 50 wins and Utah’s performance in this week’s final match-up of the season against the Los Angeles Clippers could very well determine whether or not they’ll end up grabbing the fourth seed and earning home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

We’ve reached the point where every game is crucial, so hopefully that means the Jazz will step up much more this week than they did in Week 21.