Second Half Schedule: Who, What, Where, When, Why & How

As Mitchell, Snyder and the Jazz eye the road ahead, Utah’s post All-Star schedule could provide some reprieve. (Andrew D. Bernstein via espn.com)

Having named All-Star reserves on Tuesday evening, the league continued down its to-do list Wednesday afternoon with an task that is exclusive-to-this-season: releasing the schedule for the second half of the year.

Here’s a quick high-level look at what the league-leading Utah Jazz will be up to between March 10 and May 16.

The When

We already knew that the Jazz were one of 14 teams that would enjoy an extra day on the front end of the league’s All-Star Break, playing their final game on March 3 rather than March 4. Now we know that they will also get two extra days off on the back end.

Last week, Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted that teams without All-Stars might be might be scheduled to return to the court on March 10, while teams with All-Star participants could be slated for March 11. Teams that are scheduled to resume play on March 10 will be expected to assemble on March 8, or the day after the All-Star game, so it seems reasonable to give an extra day to All-Star heavy teams. With the Jazz sending two players and a coaching staff to Atlanta¹, it seemed likely they’d be high on the list to get the extra day off.

To be honest, the extra days off probably isn’t that big a deal from a basketball perspective. One way or another, the Jazz will be scheduled to play 36 games in the 68 days from March 10 through May 16, and starting two days later won’t change that. The start date is more about giving the All-Star participants – including the coaching staff – a couple of days after Atlanta to safely visit family and/or relax briefly before going back to the grind.

It’s bad news for Jazz fans, who will have to suffer through eight days without Jazz basketball.

The Where

The Jazz travel schedule will be much less strenuous than the first half, when they played eleven road games in the Eastern Conference and only eight in the in the Western Conference.

For starters, 19 of the remaining 36 games will be played in Salt Lake City. It’s probably unnecessary to explain why home games are a positive, but those 19 games also include seven matchups against Eastern Conference teams making their annual visit to Vivint Smart Home Arena. That doesn’t mean that all seven teams will be at a significant travel or rest disadvantage, but it increases the likelihood that many of those opponents will be on longer road trips prior to arriving in Salt Lake City.

An additional eight games will be played in California and Arizona, with two road games remaining against each of the Lakers, Warriors, Kings and Suns. The benefit here is that these are some of the shortest trips the Jazz can make², with each of these venues within a two-hour flight of Salt Lake City. The shorter hops should be preferable to multiple cross-country jaunts. In addition, the games against the Lakers will be played in a single trip, on April 17 and 19, but the schedule wasn’t so kind with the Warriors, Kings and Suns.

That’s 27 out of 36 games (75%) that will be played in Utah or within a relatively short flight.

What else is left?

The remaining nine games – one quarter of the second half slate – will involve travelling in an eastward direction, longer flights, and the longest remaining road trip of the season.

The team will quickly knock out the all four remaining road games in the Eastern Conference, as part of a five game road trip right after the break³, visiting Boston, Washington (making up the game that was postponed in early January), Toronto (in Tampa, Florida) and wrapping up with Chicago.

In the west, the Jazz will visit Southwest foes Dallas, Houston and Memphis, as well as intra-division opponents Minnesota and Oklahoma City once each. These games will be spread out on various one-, two-, and three-game road trips down the stretch.

The Who

When it comes to playing the top teams in the league⁴, the Jazz have also done much of the heavy lifting in the first half of the season.

• The Jazz have already played eight of 13 games against the top tier of the league (winning percentages over .600 – or 50-win pace in an 82-game season). The five remaining games are a pair in Los Angeles against the Lakers, a pair in Phoenix, and a night hosting the Brooklyn Nets.
• The Jazz have five games remaining against the next grouping of teams – the ones I wouldn’t consider top tier, but that could be if their record improves slightly. The good news is that those games are all at home. The Spurs will visit twice, the Blazers will visit twice, and the Nuggets will play once in Salt Lake City.
• A third of the Jazz schedule is against .500-ish teams, with five home games and seven road games. The most notable opponents are the Memphis Grizzlies (three meetings, with two in Utah) and the Golden State Warriors (two matchups in San Francisco).
• Finally, Utah face the lowest tier of teams in the league a whopping 14 times in the second half, including eight of those games at home. This group is largely made up of Western Conference teams the Jazz haven’t seen or have only played once: Sacramento (all three games), Oklahoma City (two games), Houston (all three games), and Minnesota (two games).

The How

The Jazz will play eight back-to-back sets in the second half of the season, up slightly from seven sets in the first half. The increase is probably to be expected and maybe even a direct result of the later start after the All-Star break.

Counting other sets of games is tricky, as every back-to-back has the potential to be both the front end , the middle and the back end of four games in six nights.

True to recent league preferences, there are no instances of four games in five nights or three games in three nights. It wouldn’t surprise me if teams making up a larger number of postponed games have to do one or the other at some point.⁵

The Why

With five games left in the first half, the Jazz have 41 games left to play – exactly half of a traditional schedule.

A four game lead in the loss column over the nearest competitors⁶ and a less challenging schedule should give Jazz fans plenty of optimism as the team continues its quest for the top record in the league and a deep playoff run.

And ideally, the biggest “why” of all: a championship.