The Utah Jazz hope to finish season as the West’s second best

After an exciting All-Star weekend, Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert, and the Utah Jazz are looking to finish the regular season on a high note.

With 28 games left to play in the regular season, the Utah Jazz are basically a lock to make the playoffs. The unknown answer is with what seed Utah will enter the postseason with among a very competitive Western Conference.

Currently, the Jazz are sitting at the fourth seed in the West, just 1.5 games behind the second seeded Denver Nuggets, and spots two through seven are separated by only five games. From here on out, every win and loss means a little more.

The future is unpredictable, but here are some of the leading online algorithms calculating where the Utah Jazz will finish the year:

ESPN BPI – 54-28 (fourth seed, two games behind second seed)

Basketball Reference – 53.1-28.9 (fourth seed, 1.2 games behind second seed)

FiveThirtyEight – 53-29 (fifth seed, three games behind second seed)

With such a congested group chasing the Los Angeles Lakers for the top spot, the second seed in the West is wide open. Grabbing the second seed could be the difference between a first round exit and a surprising Finals run.

The second seed would avoid the top-seeded Lakers until the Conference Finals and would have home court advantage in the first and second rounds.

Of course, for the Jazz to make the playoffs as the second seed, they need to win more games than the teams they’re battling against for it. More importantly, Utah needs to beat those same teams, for both seeding and tie-breaking purposes. These critical opponents are the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, and the Houston Rockets.

So far this season, the Jazz are 0-2 against Denver with two games between them left, 2-1 against the Clippers with one game left, and 1-1 against Houston with one game left.

Because of their current head-to-head records against these teams, Utah has the opportunity to win each tie-breaking scenario outright, or at least tie the season series, which would then trigger a different tie-breaking rule that could also favor the Jazz.

The race for second place will be won by the team that wants it most. If the Utah Jazz hope to have the best odds to get the Conference Finals, they have to outlast the Nuggets, Clippers, and Rockets to snag the second seed.

With just 28 games left to go, every game suddenly has playoff implications, starting with the first game back from the All-Star break against the San Antonio Spurs at home Friday night.