1. General Health
Will the Utah Jazz ever just catch a break? It feels like with every new season, we always say that THIS will be the year that the Jazz finally overcome their injury woes and maintain a healthy roster for the duration of the season. However, up to this point, 2017-18 has been more of the same.
Dante Exum went down during the preseason with a shoulder injury that may keep him out for the entire season. Joe Johnson missed significant time to start out the year. Rudy Gobert is dealing with his second knee injury of the season (both of which have happened on somewhat freak accidents) with this one set to keep him out of action for roughly a month.
Rodney Hood has had injury woes this season, Raul Neto has missed six games with an apparently brutal concussion and even Donovan Mitchell recently missed two games with a toe contusion. In short, that new training staff that was the topic of so much conversation this offseason hasn’t really lived up to the hype so far as the Jazz have been as beat up as ever.
Glass Is Half Full: For Utah Jazz' Rudy Gobert, PCL Injury Is Much Better Than ACL Injury via @forbes https://t.co/1OnwbITQjR
— Josh Dines MD (@joshdinesmd) December 23, 2017
Therefore, the top thing on Utah’s Christmas wish list has to be for that trend to simply reverse itself. Health for 2018 should be their number one desire. This will help them have more stable rotations, a more consistent game plan and simply grant them the ability to finally have their best players on the court.
Utah’s injuries have been their biggest detriment for the past three seasons and if they’re to have any hope of bouncing back and making the playoffs, they’ll need that to change in a big way.