Utah Jazz: 3 Match-ups to watch versus defending champions Toronto Raptors
By Caleb Manser
Here are three key match-ups as the Utah Jazz host the Toronto Raptors tonight in Salt Lake City.
The Utah Jazz are back home from their successful four game road trip. They have to be feeling good after winning all four games crammed in a six day stretch, despite the lackluster competition.
Now that they’ve somewhat bounced back from the four game losing streak they opened the stretch run with, the NBA competition will immediately ramp up starting with the defending champions tonight in Salt Lake City.
The Jazz will take on the Toronto Raptors for the second and final time this season. Last time these two teams met, the Jazz took quite a beating in the first half, accumulating their largest half time deficit in franchise history.
They followed it up with a weird third quarter, scoring the most points in a quarter in franchise history. Quin Snyder asked his team in the moment, “How badly do we want to be a great team?”.
Despite the third quarter surge, the Jazz still lost the game by 20 points and immediately flew to Philadelphia for another beating in the Eastern Conference. Let’s hope things turn out much differently tonight in the Wasatch Front.
The Raptors aren’t the favorites to repeat as champions this year or even likely to do so after losing their best player Kawhi Leonard in free agency following the championship parade. However they’ve still played really well this regular season, bucking the trend of what is supposed to happen to teams that lose superstars in return for nothing.
The Raps are on pace to win 58 games and grab the second seed in the Eastern Conference. They own the second longest win streak among NBA teams this season, rattling off 15 straight in January and February.
This will in now way be an easy game for the Utah Jazz, as the Raptors also boast two All-Stars themselves, namely Kyle Lowry and Pascal “Spicy P” Siakam. Here are three key match-ups to watch for this game.