The Utah Jazz are entering their second-straight season of "softly tanking". They didn't trade away their best players, but they traded away enough role players that it's fair to think the team isn't serious about winning this season. The goal is several-fold; with the team wanting guys like Lauri Markkanen and Walker Kessler to find ways to improve even further, the development of their trio of rookies and of course trying to secure a second-first-round pick by finishing with a bad enough record to retain their first-round selection; a selection currently owned by the Oklahoma City Thunder.
If the pick falls in the Top 10, the Jazz keep it. So what should fans look forward to over the last 25+ games? Well, a lot of losing. The team is currently 26-30 and has 26 games left to play. They have 12 games left against teams with losing records, and 14 against teams with a winning record.
Of those 12 games, only seven of them are against different teams. The San Antonio Spurs, the Atlanta Hawks, the Houston Rockets, and the Golden State Warriors will square off with the Jazz at least twice each, with the Rockets having three games left.
The winning teams that make up the other 14 games are the Orlando Magic, Denver Nuggets, the Boston Celtics, Minnesota Timberwolves, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Dallas Mavericks the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Los Angeles Clippers. The Nuggets, T-Wolves, Mavs, and Clippers each have two games left against the Jazz. So, not an easy scenario for the Jazz to go through, especially with one of the worst defenses in the league.
Things are going to get bad, and they may even get worse when you realize the Bulls are actually on the rise lately, making them far from an easy team. This is not a situation where fans should be optimistic about a late-season surge.
With the Jazz's bad defense, uneven play on the road, and a host of playoff teams to contend with, the best-case scenario for the Jazz is a 36-46 record, with the Jazz going 10-16 over the last two-plus months of the season.
Worst case scenario, they win about four more games, which considering how bad the defense has been, isn't out of the question.