Let’s take a look at every team in the East and discuss how they could make victory a struggle for the Utah Jazz.
There is plenty of excitement in Jazzland about how deep of a playoff run this team can make. Recently with ESPN’s top 100 player rankings being released, fans can easily justify calling the Utah Jazz a contender.
The Jazz placed five players high in the top 100 of both Sports Illustrated and ESPN’s player rankings, and if you want to get even more specific, the Jazz were the only team in the league to place five men in the top 70 for either list.
However, the NBA season is a marathon, filled with several hurdles trying to knock your team out of contention. Opponents might have the one thing that can stop your team, a kryptonite if you will. Matchups can mean life or death in the playoffs, as last year we saw the Portland Trail Blazers make a run to the Conference Finals, virtually the same team that was swept by the underdog New Orleans Pelicans the year before.
Sometimes it is a mismatch between rosters that changes franchises’ fate, other times a team faces bad luck by losing a player to injury, or their team is more fatigued than their opponent.
Here are a couple instances how NBA teams were taken down:
- In the 2012 NBA Finals, the Miami Heat shut down James Harden by forcing him out of the offense. If you look at both rosters, the Heat used four perimeter players other than their big 3 to force Harden into inefficient shots. Meanwhile the Rockets only had Thabo Sefalosha and the undersized 6-foot-1 Derek Fisher outside of their respective big 3.
- Later that summer Harden was traded in one of the most lopsided deals in NBA history, breaking up what could’ve been a Thunder dynasty.
- The late 2000s Utah Jazz. They got eliminated three years in a row by the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe Bryant was a monster all three years, but the real difference maker was the Laker bigs, namely Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom. They successfully shut down Carlos Boozer in 2008, holding him to 40% shooting overall, and consistently outperformed Utah at defending the interior all three years.
- It took the Jazz six years and an extensive rebuild to get back to that level of playoff competition.
- The Portland Trail Blazers eliminated the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2018 playoffs. If Paul George wasn’t dealing with a nagging shoulder injury things might have been different.
- Now both Paul George and Russell Westbrook are gone from the Thunder, effectively closing the franchise’s most recent era of success.
- Even last spring we saw the Utah Jazz outmatched in outside shooting. Despite several wide open attempts, they couldn’t get the ball to go through the hoop, which led to some roster changes made this summer.
For the most part these roster changes should ensure smoother sailing in the regular season and playoffs, but let’s take a look at what the Eastern Conference teams can exploit with this current version of the Jazz.