Utah Jazz 2017-18 Week 17 Outlook, Predictions

The Utah Jazz will look to extend their five-game winning streak as they face yet another road-heavy slate in Week 17 of the 2017-18 season.

So, the Utah Jazz went 3-0 last week in a slate that featured the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs. Oh, and not only that but leading scorer Donovan Mitchell was out of commission for the latter of those two. Raise your hand if you saw that coming!

If your hand’s up, you’re either a wizard or a pathological liar.

But jokes aside, what an incredible week for the Utah Jazz as they blew out the Warriors and Phoenix Suns by 30-plus points, then held on to earn a gritty road win over the San Antonio Spurs. Utah has suddenly found another gear and they’ve played sensationally of late. The offense is humming with three straight games of reaching or surpassing the 120-point mark and the defense has been staunch. All of a sudden, this looks like a team that truly could make a push to the playoffs.

I was among the many that was feeling less than optimistic about Utah’s chances last week. Sure, they played well in Week 15 and I thought there was a chance they could steal one of the two games against either Golden State or San Antonio, but I never thought they’d come out and get all three. Therefore, by going 3-0 last week, the Jazz raised their record to 24-28, now putting them dead even with my projections record after I went 1-2.

Hopefully the Jazz can continue to surge and not just catch up to me, but also to their Western Conference foes that find themselves just ahead of Utah in the standings.

To do so, they’ll have to take advantage of a huge week ahead that starts out on the road on Monday against one of the very teams that the Jazz will be competing with for a playoff spot – the New Orleans Pelicans. Since a big win over the Houston Rockets which ended sadly in a season-ending Achilles injury for DeMarcus Cousins, the Pels have struggled and dropped three of their last four.

Ideally that means the rising Jazz will catch the slumping Pelicans at the right time and be able to come out on top.

From there, Utah will close out their four-game road trip against the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday, before returning home for the lone home game of the week on Friday against the Charlotte Hornets. Last of all, the Jazz will hit the road once again on Sunday where they’ll visit the Portland Trail Blazers, another team they could be grappling with for playoff positioning.

That makes for some extremely crucial games this week, all of which are very winnable, particularly in comparison to the games in which Utah arose victorious this past week. Crazy as it might seem and difficult though it will be with such a road-heavy schedule, the Jazz will be bringing a five-game winning streak into this week with a chance to extend it to nine games if they can continue their recent hot play against beatable teams.

It would be an impressive feat if they were to do that, so let’s dive in to each game and see what the chances are of that happening.