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The real competition
Posted by: Henri on February 13th, 2012
The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of the Utah Jazz.As Jazz suitors, we always go up and down with the wins and losses of our team. Some of these are emotional wins, like against the lakers, or pure counter-performances, like against Toronto in SLC. If we follow the path of our emotions, we can somehow waste our time on focussing on what finally appears as details from a 66-games schedule, forgetting what really matters for the Jazz: the results obtained in its own level of competition, against its real rivals.
If you are honest, you will recognize that the Jazz level of play ranges between the 6th and 12th spot in the western conference, n°6 and n°12 being very unlikely. The good news is that this range includes playoff spots.
What are the real Jazz rivals ? I have seen a lot of games so far, and my conclusion is that in western conference, there are approximately 3 groups of team:
group A: Thunder, Clippers, Spurs, Mavs, Lakers … Even if they aren’s playing well, I am pretty sure Mavs and Lakers will climb up in the next months.
group B: Blazers, Jazz, Nuggets, Wolves, Warriors, Grizzlies, Rockets,
group C: Suns, Hornets, Kings
How are the Jazz doing in their virtual group B ? Extremely well, which is the other good news: 1-0 against Blazers, 1-1 against Nuggets, 1-0 against Wolves, 2-0 against Grizzlies, 1-1 against Warriors, 0-0 against Rockets … which means 6-2 overall, including a 3-2 on the road and a 3-0 at home.
I like to think like that: in each conference, the final standings will be given at a high probability by the results of the games played by teams concerned with the same level. This is all the more true this year, as the Jazz will play fewer East games and their “group B” level includes 3 division rivals (12 games, nearly 15% of the season’s games).
So, even if we are sometimes desperate about games that could have been won (Knicks, Raptors, …) or about the team’s lack of energy during some contests, we have to be happy with the Jazz taking care of business and winning the games that matter, in their real competition.
Replies: 2
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2 Responses
Your reasoning is almost sound. The problem is that we can beat all the teams in our grouping, as above, and still be out of the playoffs when loosing 2 games to supposed non factor teams.
Example, we lose to Knicks and Raptors then beat the Nuggets. Then Nuggets lose to us but beat the Knicks and Raptors, who heads to the playoffs? How many games seperate the teams 5th through 12th?
Personally I am just enjoying the season and growth of our youngsters.
Of course … but all these non-group B games will tend to counterbalance themselves in the longer term. In fact, I suspect that my thought is exactly how teams are considering to ponder their effort every night, especially with this compressed and harassing schedule. It’s much more important to be at 100%, and without injured players, for the group B games.