Positive #1 – December isn’t a gauntlet! (for once)
As I mentioned, the past two seasons have featured a very rough first half of the schedule for the Utah Jazz. Particularly, December has been a main culprit as a deadly stretch that saw the Jazz plummet down the standings. November has been bad in years past as well (it’s still pretty tough again this year, but more on that in a second), but really December has been the death knell.
Fortunately, such isn’t the case at all this season! In fact, as a whole, the Utah Jazz schedule is much more balanced with fewer long road stretches against top teams and less instances of several games in few nights taking place against teams with elite talent. December has been an absolute gauntlet the past two years, but this year it appears quite manageable. That, along with the overall consistency of the schedule, will be a nice change of pace.
In December, the Jazz play seven games at home and seven on the road, with their longest full road trip being just three games wherein they’ll face the Atlanta Hawks, the Charlotte Hornets and the Miami Heat, none of which made the playoffs a season ago and each should be winnable games again this year.
There are a few daunting challenges that month, including a back-to-back at Toronto and at Philadelphia to kick it off, but that’s the lone back-to-back in December, and aside from the three games I just mentioned, the Jazz will also face Memphis, Oklahoma City, Minnesota, Orlando and Detroit, all of which figure to be either lottery teams or very low playoff seeds.
In other words, the schedule is set up nicely such that the Jazz won’t have to wait until the turn of the calendar year or the All-Star break to really rev things up. They’re positioned in such a way that we could see them really thriving well in advance of the winter holidays.
That’ll be a nice change of pace for a team that has caused its fanbase to sweat bullets until well into January the past two seasons.