With a playoff race that’s about as tight as they come, there are several possibilities for who the Utah Jazz could face in the first round of the 2018 NBA Playoffs.
With Thursday’s win over the Phoenix Suns, the Utah Jazz not only remained within the Western Conference playoff mix, but also moved up to seventh place. That’s quite an incredible feat for a team that went 19-28 in its first 47 games. Utah’s latest streak of winning 20 if its last 22 games now has them at an astounding 39-30.
But the Western Conference continues to be an absolute mess with just 4.5 games separating seeds 3-10 and only 1.5 separating 4-8. With that being the case, the Jazz still have a shot to climb all the way up in the standings to earn home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Or they could still fall out altogether.
Based on how they’ve played of late and considering the tough schedules of some of the teams around them in the standings, I think the former is much more likely than the latter, but Utah simply can’t take their foot off the gas if they hope to qualify for postseason action and perhaps even earn a favorable matchup in the first round.
Oddly enough, the same goes for pretty much every one of these teams in the 3-10 spots. While some matchups are far less likely than others, such as a bout against the Denver Nuggets or LA Clippers who are currently out of the playoff mix, they’re still possible depending on who may get hot or go on a slump.
And with the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors all but guaranteeing their spots as the top two teams in the West, there’s a chance that Utah could face either one of them if they finish in seventh or eighth.
In other words, that gives Utah nine potential opponents that they could face in the first round of the playoffs (technically the Los Angeles Lakers haven’t been eliminated from playoff contention yet and could meet the Jazz in the first round with a huge win streak and a giant slump from teams ahead of them, but it’s so far from a realistic possibility that I’m not going to address it here).
As such, let’s take a closer look at each of the potential matchups including the odds of them truly happening, how favorable/unfavorable the matchup would be and my prediction for how the Jazz would fare in a series against each team.