Utah Jazz: Predicting the 2019-20 Season

Our John Keeffer diagrams a path to 55 wins for the new-look Utah Jazz. (Melissa Majchrzak via utahjazz.com)

The recent release of the 2019-20 NBA schedule signals that basketball is seemingly just around the corner. Most teams should be starting up their training camps in late September, and then preseason basketball will kick off on the first week of October. So hang in there, Jazz fans! The long wait is almost over!

Just a quick public service announcement: Utah Jazz basketball will be back in exactly two months.

You can now go back to your regularly scheduled programming.

— John Keeffer (@john_keeffer) August 23, 2019

With the schedule release comes prediction season, and I’ve made an annual tradition of predicting the Utah Jazz’s final record. The process I go through is always fairly simple. To predict how the Jazz will perform, I went through every team and bucketed them into categories by rough odds of winning. The “near 100%” category are teams the Jazz should beat every time out, followed by teams against whom they should win most of the time (we’ll call this group 75%), teams who are in a similar tier (50%) and elite teams against whom wins are harder to come by (25%).

A team’s odds of winning are more complicated than that though. You have to factor in fatigue, if one of the teams is playing in a back-to-back, maybe they are in the final game of a road-trip, etc. You also have the occasional lapse where a team loses a game they should win, or vice versa. I do my best to consider those things as well, and to build them into the final projection.

In the end we are left with this:

John has Utah at 20-8 in mid December.

After capping an 11-win streak, John foresees things evening out with a 15-10 stretch.

A tough closing schedule could lead Utah to a 7-7 finish.

My projections have the Jazz going 55-27. I know that that is a lot to take in, so I will try to highlight a few of the key stretches that stood out.

The first thing is that I have the Jazz losing just two home games all season. That is not to say that I really think the Jazz are going to go 39-2 at home this year. That is extremely unrealistic. For a majority of the teams though, especially in the loaded West, I have the odds of winning at 50 percent. The only teams that come in with a win probability at 75 percent or higher are the Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Clippers, and the Milwaukee Bucks. Against most of the teams in the West though, the Jazz should be able to split those series. With that being the case, I simply counted a win for the home team in those scenarios. There will likely be some variance to that, but it should balance out by the Jazz also winning some games on the road that I have as losses.

The Jazz will spend plenty of time on the road early in the year, and that coupled with some stiff competition could lead to them looking sluggish early on. I have them starting 13-8 to start. They’ll be playing the Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, Raptors and the Sixers all on the road during that stretch. They’ll also play host to the Clippers, Thunder, Sixers, Bucks and the Warriors. 

There just won’t be too many gimmes to start the season. So don’t be shocked if the Jazz start slow out of the gates. From there though, I have the Jazz going on their first real win streak of the season. They not only have a solid stretch of home games, but the opposition gets much easier. They’ll get the Grizzlies and Magic at home, and will have a 3-game road trip against the Hawks, Hornets and Heat. All winnable games.

From January 2nd through January 22nd, the Utah Jazz will literally play every other day. That's insane! There are no back-to-backs or anything like that. I wonder what is better for the players: having a few back-to-backs but 2-3 days off? Or playing every other day for 3 weeks?

— John Keeffer (@john_keeffer) August 23, 2019

January has one of the most interesting scheduled stretches that I have ever seen. The Jazz will play every other day from January 4 through January 22. No back-to-backs, no days with even two days rest. I personally don’t know what a player would prefer. The lack of back-to-backs is nice, but this also means there is going to be limited opportunities for the team to practice. So if they are struggling, it could spiral if they don’t have an opportunity to get on the same page through practice.

Once they get through that they’ll enter into perhaps the most difficult stretch of the season. Starting January 27 they will play Houston, then at San Antonio, at Denver (that’s a back-to-back), at Portland, back home for Denver and Portland, and then back on the road to play Houston and Dallas in a back-to-back. I have them losing each of those road games.

After the All-Star break things will get easier for the month of March before picking back up again to close the season. A final stretch of at Portland, at Denver, home verses the Clippers, at Phoenix, at OKC, and then home against Denver could be vital in regards to playoff seeding. 

The only gimme in the stretch is Phoenix, but every other team could be fighting late playoff position. The final game of the season against Denver could be massive depending on what happens. Can you imagine if the final game of the season determines home court advantage or not? If this season is like last, it could be the difference between the two and seven seeds.

In the end, I have the Utah Jazz finishing at 55-27. With how deep the Western Conference is, that could potentially mean a chance to finish as the No. 1 or 2 seed. The season is just about a month and a half away. It’s time to find out how good this Jazz team can be!