Utah Jazz: Three most brutal aspects of the 2017-18 schedule

Tough Back-to-Back Match-ups

Although the 2017-18 NBA season is set to begin 10 days earlier than last year in an attempt to reduce the number of back-to-backs throughout the year, the Jazz find themselves with 16 – just one less than last year, which is a rather insignificant amount.

Not only did the Jazz not see much of a reduction in their total number of back-to-backs, but for the most part the teams they play in those instances are tough opponents. I mentioned a couple of them during the horrific month of December, but it turns out that the Jazz will play the Oklahoma City Thunder twice on back ends of back-to-backs throughout the season and, as hard as it may be to believe, ALL FOUR of Utah’s contests against the Spurs are on the second game of a back-to-back.

As if the Spurs wouldn’t have been hard enough to beat if the Jazz were well-rested, the fact that each and every time the two teams meet will be in the second game in as many nights is pretty ridiculous. As much as it pains me to say it, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Utah drop all four to the formidable Spurs.

The other tough opponents they’ll face in such circumstances include the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers. So as you can see, Utah’s back-to-backs may have gone down by one, but the caliber of opponents in such games this season certainly doesn’t help the matter all that much.

Next: Utah Jazz: Predicting win/loss record after schedule release

If it wasn’t already brutally clear, the Utah Jazz have somewhat of a challenging schedule ahead of them based on these three difficult aspects. Nevertheless, over the course of an 82-game season, each and every team is bound to have similar obstacles that come as a result of mere luck of the draw and just like all of them, the Jazz will simply have to find a way to overcome.

More than ever, the Jazz need to take care of their home court and avoid dropping winnable games at all costs, because these three challenging facets of their schedule will undoubtedly make their already minuscule margin of error even smaller.