Utah Jazz Preseason Week Two Outlook, Predictions

10/10 Utah at Los Angeles Lakers

The Jazz will have a quick turn-around after facing the Suns as they’ll head to LA the next day to face the Los Angeles Lakers. Although the Lakers have Rookie of the Year favorite Lonzo Ball (according to the 2017 NBA GM Survey) and a slew of other young, promising guys, it’s been a rough start to preseason for them.

As of this writing, they currently stand at 0-3 in preseason play and while they undoubtedly have some playmakers, the thing that has stood out the most about them has been their atrocious defense. To their credit, two of their three preseason games have been close which is a credit to their offensive firepower, but their inability to challenge on the opposite end of the floor has been troublesome.

And quite frankly, one-dimensional teams that don’t focus defensively are going to have a hard time against the Utah Jazz. Utah’s defense should be able to shut down an inexperienced Lakers team quite easily and while the Jazz offense was very much in question going into this season, it’s actually looked much better so far than many had predicted.

Utah’s depth and ball movement have allowed them to score quite easily and particularly against LA’s less than staunch defense, they should be able to continue to do so.

The one concern I have is that with this being the second night of a back-to-back, the Jazz could be quite worn out and with it being the final preseason game, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were very conservative with the playing time of their key guys. If that ends up being the case, I could see the Lakers sneaking past them. Otherwise, this one should be all Jazz.

My Prediction: Jazz Win

Final Score: Utah 114, Los Angeles 101

Next: Utah Jazz at Phoenix Suns preseason game primer and info

Not that it was much of an accomplishment given that two of Utah’s three games last week were “gimme games”, but I did manage to correctly pin Utah to go 3-0. I’ve honestly been very impressed with how they’ve looked so far, therefore, given that they’ll be playing less than daunting opponents once again, I feel relatively confident with my predictions which will leave the Jazz with a 5-0 start to preseason.

Obviously preseason record has no bearing whatsoever on the regular season, but it will still be good for Utah to enter the season with heightened confidence which will likely be the case if they do indeed go 5-0.

But from there, the stakes will be higher, the competition will be fiercer and predicting outcomes will be much, much tougher. The Jazz are in for a challenging year, but I know they’re up for the task.

And I can hardly wait to see how it all unfolds.