How the Jazz can find success in their remaining schedule

The Utah Jazz seem to be limping to Tuesday’s game vs. the Lakers as they begin to close out the regular season.

As the standings currently sit, the Jazz are 12th in the West at 36-42, 1.5 games out from the 10th seed in the conference. These final four games for Utah can make or break whether the team is fighting in the play-in, or if they’ll be securing their first lottery selection since 2016.

While seeing this current core try to challenge a team like the Thunder or Timberwolves in a play-in game would be interesting to watch, all signs lead to the Jazz sitting a lot of key players to end the season. Already, Jordan Clarkson, Rudy Gay, Collin Sexton, and now Walker Kessler are looking as if they’ll be sitting out the rest of the season, with All-Star Lauri Markkanen currently with a status of day-to-day.

This leaves the Jazz with a potential starting lineup of Talen Horton-Tucker, Ochai Agbaji, Simone Fontecchio, Juan Toscano-Anderson, and Kelly Olynyk. While there’s some young talent on the roster that can be exciting to watch, this isn’t a roster that screams “We’re ready to win games.”

They aren’t.

Especially with the looming schedule the Jazz will be enduring for the rest of the season, they’ll most likely be the underdogs from here on out. In the next four games, Utah will play the Lakers twice, Denver, and Oklahoma City. All of these teams are not only better than the Jazz, but they’ll most likely play for more incentive and stakes, forecasting some tough, physical games ahead.

So the combination of injury concerns piling up, as well as the somewhat difficult schedule that approaches, does not fare well for the Jazz. However, Utah can still capitalize while closing out the regular season by doing one simple task!

Tank.

As a fan of a not-very-competitive team, you may find yourself in an odd position to cheer for your team to lose games. However, when you look at the bigger picture, tanking games at this point in the season is more practical than winning meaningless games in April.

By losing out in the rest of their games, the Jazz could actually end up winning…

Utah sits at the 9th-best odds to secure the number one overall pick in May as of right now. These upcoming games will inevitably impact where Utah ends up finalizing in the standings at the end of the season.

At 42 losses and four games to go, if all goes wrong (or right?), the team could end with 46. Depending on how well teams such as Orlando and Washington do down the stretch, Utah could jump up to the 7th-best odds in the league.

This means Utah’s odds can jump from a 20.3% chance to land a top-four pick, and a 4.5% to land number one, to a 29.4% chance to jump to top-four, and a 6.7% chance to get number one. When it comes time for the lottery balls to jump around in that machine in May, those numbers matter.

The dream of Victor Wembanyama or Scoot Henderson in a Jazz jersey can become more of a reality if the Jazz can “successfully” close out these next few games. Just try to view these next games as having immense potential for a short-term loss that leads to long-term gain.