Utah Jazz vs. Washington Wizards: Keys to the Game

The Utah Jazz played extremely well in their last contest against the Washington Wizards and will look to match that effort again tomorrow night.

Call it a coincidence, but in the two games immediately following Rudy Gobert’s comments hinting that the Utah Jazz had some players that weren’t coming out and competing, the team has looked energetic and sharp. The Jazz followed up their win over the New Orleans Pelicans on Monday with a commanding 30-point win over the Sacramento Kings last night.

It was a game that saw each of Utah’s starters (minus Dante Exum who went scoreless) finish in double figures while the team also received crucial contributions off the bench from Shelvin Mack (14 points), Joe Ingles (12 points) and Joe Johnson (9 points). Granted, the Sacramento Kings aren’t a great team by any means, but given that they gave the Jazz some problems in the previous three meetings, it was good to see Utah come away with a big win.

And the Jazz will certainly need to maintain that level of play if they hope to win against a much more worthy opponent tomorrow night in the Washington Wizards. The Wizards find themselves in third place in the Eastern Conference and have been playing quite well of late as winners of four of their last five. However, they’re coming off of a tough loss to the Clippers last night and will be playing their fourth game of a brutal five-game road trip when they face Utah tomorrow.

Beyond that, they have to be somewhat concerned about how thoroughly defeated they were by the Jazz when the two teams met in Washington in late February. Utah won the contest 102-92, but let by as many as 24 and recorded an atrocious 24 turnovers. If the Jazz had taken better care of the ball, there’s no question that the game would have resulted in even more of a blowout.

Therefore, Utah should be feeling confident while Washington will likely be out for revenge. There’s no doubting that this will be a tough game, but as Utah prepares to face Golden State and San Antonio twice over the course of their last six games, this contest against Washington will provide a nice test and will be a game that Utah needs to win.

If they can keep up the high level of play that they’ve exhibited in the last two contests while tweaking their play in the following areas in order to eliminate some of Washington’s strengths, then they should be able to do just that.