Everybody is watching the Jazz lose and lose and lose.
Sure their defense is terrible (especially at the end of games), but what people aren’t really noticing in all of this is that only one team in the NBA has played more games on the road than the Utah Jazz up through this point. The Jazz have played 15 games on the road compared to 11 games at home (where they have gone 9-2).
A young team tends to play more poorly on the road, and the Jazz are obviously no exception. That’s not necessarily an excuse — they need to play much better if they hope to make any noise in the playoffs — but their record isn’t necessarily quite as poor as their 3-7 record in the last 10 games has made it look.
The Denver Nuggets, who have recently passed up the Utah Jazz in the standings, have played only 10 games on the road, by comparison.
The Utah Jazz have a nice point differential of +5.0 (only 5 teams in the league have a better differential). With a record that is fast approaching .500 that means that they are winning games by a good amount, and losing games by very little (and usually in the last two minutes of the game as we have seen during their latest losing streak).
Winning the close games on the road is difficult, with the home court crowd cheering their team on — and the Utah Jazz have certainly found that to be so.
Winning the close games on the road with such a roster devoid of veterans is even more difficult. Players learn to win the close games on the road, and I don’t know that the Jazz players have quite figured that out yet.
They still have time, obviously, but with 10 teams in the Western Conference at .500 or above, it isn’t necessarily going to be easy getting into the playoffs, let alone make any noise when they get there.
We can only hope that the Jazz get this figured out this season, but even if they still continue to lose close games on the road, their excellent home record might still be good enough to get them into the playoffs — after all, every team is going to play 41 games on the road and 41 games at home this season.
