Is there a light at the end of the tunnel for the Utah Jazz?

After a grueling month of December that has seen the Utah Jazz struggle immensely, is there any hope for the remainder of their 2017-18 season?

The second the 2017-18 NBA schedules were released, the first thing that stood out to every single Utah Jazz fan was just how brutal December was going to be. And with just one game remaining on Saturday when Utah will host the Cleveland Cavaliers, it’s been pretty clear up to this point that the month has been every bit as bad as advertised.

Despite a few encouraging wins, the Jazz sit at just 4-10 during the month of December, which after a less than solid start in the two months before that, has Utah at 15-21 for the season. That’s not exactly where fans hoped they would be at the turn of the new year. In short, the holiday season has been far from merry and bright for the Jazz.

And what’s worse has been the way that many of the games have gone. Aside from those four encouraging victories, Utah has largely been defeated in blowout fashion and in many times have looked unfocused and lacking in energy. That’s to be expected to some extent when playing so many tough opponents in such a small window, but it’s also been pretty revealing that this Jazz team isn’t quite the squad we were hopeful they could be based on their six-game win streak in November/early December.

Unless they’re able to keep LeBron James’ Utah curse alive and hand him his seventh straight loss in Salt Lake City on Saturday (which seems quite unlikely considering the Cavs are coming off a surprise loss to the Sacramento Kings and the Jazz have appeared unable to beat anybody), then Utah will close out December seven games under .500 as they head into January.

That’s a pretty bad hole to be in, without question. However, the good news is that Utah’s schedule eases up considerably from there and some may argue that the months of January and February provide somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel for the Jazz. Let’s take a look at the slate they have ahead as they turn the page over to 2018 leading up to the All-Star Break:

• 1/3 vs. New Orleans
• 1/5 at Denver
• 1/7 at Miami
• 1/10 at Washington
• 1/12 at Charlotte
• 1/15 vs. Indiana
• 1/17 at Sacramento
• 1/19 vs. New York
• 1/20 vs. LA Clippers
• 1/22 at Atlanta
• 1/24 at Detroit
• 1/26 at Toronto
• 1/30 vs. Golden State
• 2/2 at Phoenix
• 2/3 at San Antonio
• 2/5 at New Orleans
• 2/7 at Memphis
• 2/9 vs. Charlotte
• 2/11 at Portland
• 2/12 vs. San Antonio
• 2/14 vs. Phoenix

While there’s certainly some tough games in there, it’s also quite clear that Utah’s schedule gets significantly easier than what they faced in December. However, one can hardly imagine it getting any worse than what they just went up against, so maybe that’s not saying much.

The problem is that, given that Utah has now lost ten of their last twelve games, it’s going to be pretty hard for them to pull out of the spot they’re in mentally. Even in winnable games during the month of December such as against the Chicago Bulls, Milwaukee Bucks or when they led the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets for roughly three-fourths of the game, the Jazz wound up falling short. Therefore, despite the lessened competition they’ll face overall in January and February, they still may be too far behind to catch up and regain a playoff spot.

Perhaps the perfect example of what they’ll continue to be up against is the second through fifth games of January where Utah will head out on a four-game road trip. Although none of those teams – Denver, Miami, Washington or Charlotte – is overwhelmingly daunting, the fact that the Jazz will have to head straight out on the road almost immediately after finishing the hardest month any team faces this season is an absolute blow to the face.

Utah likely will still be in a bit of a funk after their tough stretch and the fact that they’re just 3-15 on the road and were just blown out by Denver on Tuesday doesn’t bode well for their chances. As much as it pains me to say it, it wouldn’t really surprise me to see Utah 10 or 11 games under .500 (or worse) by the end of that road trip due to how they’ve struggled away from home. And as much as I’d like to believe in their ability to bounce back from there, in a daunting Western Conference, it seems like a long shot.

In short, I think that Tony Jones of the Salt Lake Tribune perfectly summed up the realistic concerns that Jazz fans should have in this following tweet:

We all knew December would be tough, but we all hoped that January would in turn be a good bounce-back month for the Jazz. The former of those statements has certainly proven to be true to the extent that it might completely disprove the latter. The Jazz are in a bad spot right now, and unless they can adjust in a major and largely unforeseen way, their downward spiral may only get worse until it’s too late.

In some ways, it’s hard to be overly disappointed as from the onset of this season, we all knew it was going to be a discovery year. Unfortunately, a hot streak in November and the promising play of Donovan Mitchell led several Jazz fans (myself included) to believe that perhaps this team was approaching a special level of play above and beyond what was originally expected.

Unfortunately, it’s appearing less and less likely that such will be the case. Instead, this year is looking to be little more than that year of discovery as had been presumed. And some of those discoveries are turning out to be less than favorable.

Next: Utah Jazz: Possible moves at the trade deadline

Luckily, not all is lost. The Utah Jazz still have great pieces in the likes of Mitchell, Dante Exum and Rudy Gobert and some savvy contracts and sharp veterans in the likes of Thabo Sefolosha, Jonas Jerebko and Ekpe Udoh. While the 2017-18 season may end in a trip to the lottery, it will likely be a short trip as Utah is well poised to bounce back (and perhaps even bounce back big time) as early as the 2018-19 or 2019-20 season. There’s no way that they’re about to hit the reset button like they were forced to do back in 2013.

In other words, there’s most certainly a light at the end of the tunnel for the Utah Jazz. However, it may not come in February 2018 as many fans had hoped, instead it may be a light that arrives a couple of years down the road…