Utah Jazz target eighth straight win in LA: Preview and live comment stream

The Utah Jazz aim to continue their surge towards home court advantage in the playoffs by earning their eighth straight win in LA on Sunday.

Just four days and, in the case of the Utah Jazz, three games remain in the 2018-19 NBA regular season. It’s been a wild ride with plenty of ups and downs, and even now nearing the season’s end, there is still plenty of drama left to unfold for Utah and their Western Conference counterparts.

Although the eight Western Conference playoff teams have been decided, the playoff seeding is far from set. The Jazz currently sit in fifth place, but home court advantage is still within grasp. However, so is sliding to seventh depending how things pan out.

Meanwhile, though yesterday I wrote that Portland was looking as if they’d most likely be Utah’s first-round opponent, news shortly followed that the Denver Nuggets would be resting some of their starters in Sunday’s bout against the Portland Trail Blazers, meaning Portland’s path to the three seed is becoming more possible. If Jazz fans want to avoid the Houston Rockets (as they should) then they ought to be cheering hard for the Rockets to win out and for the Blazers to ideally drop to fifth while Utah surges to fourth.

The ideal seldom seems to occur when calculating playoff seeding, though, so it’s entirely possible that the season won’t conclude in the fashion that the Jazz might prefer. Nevertheless, rather than getting caught up in ‘what ifs’ and other plausible situations, Utah needs to instead focus on taking care of what they can control. Namely, winning as many games as possible as they pursue the fourth seed and home court advantage.

That quest continues on Sunday evening as they’ll visit the Los Angeles Lakers in LA. A mere month or two ago, this game may have very well looked like a dangerous one as many presumed that the Lakers would be seeking a playoff spot and defending their home court against the Jazz to earn one. Instead, LeBron James has been shut down for the year, the Lakers have long been eliminated and Utah will be facing a rather rag-tag crew.

Nevertheless, that so-called rag-tag crew has proven dangerous in recent bouts. Just two days ago, the Lakers toppled the LA Clippers, who still have a lot at stake in terms of playoff positioning, mind you, by a score of 122-117. In that contest, one of the unlikeliest of heroes emerged as Lakers guard Alex Caruso went off for an astounding 32 points on 10-of-19 shooting from the field and 5-of-7 from deep while adding 10 rebound and five assists.

It was a shocking performance that coupled with performances from the likes of JaVale McGee, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Rajon Rondo gave the Lakers a big-time win.

In short, sans LeBron, these gritty ball players are still coming out and showing their worth. Especially on their home court in a primetime Sunday evening matchup, the Jazz will have to be prepared, cautious and focused. Luckily, the Jazz were able to defeat the Lakers about a week and a half ago by a score of 115-100, so they should come in confident. But then again, it wasn’t exactly the prettiest game.

Donovan Mitchell struggled to find his shot and finished with just 11 points. Fortunately, Utah big men Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors took care of business, willing the Jazz to victory.  And Mitchell, who has been so solid of late outside of that contest, presumably won’t have another poor game like he did last time against the Lakers.

However, Utah will also be without Derrick Favors, Kyle Korver, Ricky Rubio and Raul Neto, while Jae Crowder is listed as questionable. This onslaught of injuries might balance out some of the solid play we saw out of Utah in the last matchup between these two teams. And it certainly will make for a worrisome contest for a Jazz team that’s aiming for its eighth win in a row and a shot at the fourth seed.

With so many players down for the count in a road game, the stage is set for the scrappy Lakers to play spoiler on Utah’s win streak. Nevertheless, with Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell and Joe Ingles all in action, and guys like Grayson Allen and Georges Niang stepping up and putting in good minutes of late, the Jazz should still have the edge in this game. As such, I’m pinning them to earn a narrow victory against the last lottery team that they’ll face until the 2019-20 season.

My Prediction: Jazz 102, Lakers 98

The Jazz and Lakers tip-off at 7:30 PM MT on NBA TV. Be sure to also join the conversation by chiming in on our live comment stream below.