Utah Jazz Week Nine Outlook: Jazz aim to battle back to .500

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SAN ANTONIO, TX – DECEMBER 9: Donovan Mitchell #45 of the Utah Jazz shoots a free throw against the San Antonio Spurs on December 9, 2018 at the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2018 NBAE (Photos by Mark Sobhani/NBAE via Getty Images) /

The Utah Jazz will continue to try to climb their way back up the standings with a three-game slate in Week Nine of NBA action.

After dropping Sunday’s contest to the San Antonio Spurs, the Utah Jazz fell back below .500 and into 13th place in the West. Though they had appeared to be turning things around previously with big wins over both San Antonio and Houston earlier in the week, Sunday’s loss had the feel of a revert to the discouraging norm.

Fortunately, despite the losing record and low spot in the standings, the Jazz are still just 1.5 games out of eighth place and four games out of fourth place with plenty of time remaining, so there’s no reason to lose hope on this team just yet. Not by a long shot.

Still, it would be nice to see them string together a bit of a winning streak and get themselves permanently back above .500 sooner rather than later. I think they actually have a pretty good shot of doing so in the upcoming week.

Last week, I underestimated the Jazz, as I pinned them to go just 1-2, losing the game against Houston and the one in San Antonio. I was right about the latter but dead wrong about the former as Utah managed to crush the Rockets despite losing Rudy Gobert early to ejection. Those projections put me at 2-1 for the week, just as the Jazz were, keeping us at an identical 13-14 record on the season.

Week Nine starts off with a bang for the Jazz as they’ll visit the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night in what will be the second night of a back-to-back for Utah. The Thunder will almost certainly be seeking revenge after being toppled by the Jazz in the first round of last year’s playoffs, and based on how both teams have played so far this season, Utah certainly looks like the underdog this time around.

From there, on Wednesday they’ll host the Miami Heat, who have given them trouble in recent contests dating back to last season. Finally, the Jazz will finish up the week on Saturday when they visit the Orlando Magic.

Monday’s contest is unfavorable for the Jazz due to how the scheduling panned out, but it’s reasonable to consider each of these games winnable. It all depends on which Utah team shows up and how well they execute, whether they look more like they did in recent home contests against the Spurs and Rockets, or more like the team that was throttled in San Antonio on Sunday. Here’s a look at how we can expect the Jazz to fare in each bout.

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