1/30 Utah vs. Golden State
7:00 pm MT – AT&T SportsNet/League Pass
Opponent record: 39-10
Season series: Warriors lead 1-0
About a month ago when the Utah Jazz faced the Golden State Warriors, they were able to keep it pretty close up until halftime. Unfortunately, the Warriors broke through in the second half and walked away with a pretty easy win. The Warriors have been an exceptional third quarter team, whereas the Jazz have struggled mightily in that period.
As I mentioned, the Jazz will be busting out their new city jerseys and court for this game, so there should be quite a lot of buzz and excitement. Hopefully, that will instill them with some momentum and energy, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to beat a dominant Warriors team.
The Warriors certainly appear to be in championship form as they’ve won six of their last seven contests which includes big-time wins over the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors. Golden State once again boasts four All-Stars in this year’s edition of the big event and each of them – Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson – have played worthy of that recognition.
The NBA's most dominant third-quarter teams since 2001, by net rating pic.twitter.com/FsylOz4Ei4
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) January 28, 2018
That’s obviously a lot of firepower to stop and few teams have been able to do so. As cool as it would be to see Utah come out and earn a big win over the reigning champs, their lack of consistency on either end of the floor coupled with their lack of star power will probably result in them falling short.
The Jazz were once considered a reasonably tough match-up for the Warriors, but they haven’t prevailed much at all in recent years and are even less formidable now, so I’m predicting that Golden State will come away with a relatively comfortable win over the Jazz.
My Prediction: Warriors Win
Final Score: Golden State 120, Utah 101