The Final Push

The Utah Jazz are beginning to make their final push for the playoffs and are starting to look like the team that I predicted at the beginning of the season. During the pre season I predicted the Jazz to finish first in the Northwest division and go as far as the Western Conference Finals to get beat out by the Los Angeles Lakers… I’m a lover but also a realist. This week the Jazz have fulfilled this first requirement, in overtaking Denver. The Jazz also find themselves in a race for second place in the Western Conference. So who cares if we finish 2^nd or 3^rd? It will determine the difference in playing a broken down Portland team or the up and coming Oklahoma City in the first round of the playoffs. But this is all speculative due to the fact that the Suns have put off a solar flare around the league as of late, and won’t win out messing up this whole blog.

The Portland Trailblazers have and always will be a team with a ton of talent that just can’t put things together. They are young and athletic, but have been plagued with injuries all season. Brandon Roy is averaging 22.1 PPG (11^th NBA) and Marcus Camby 11.7 rebounds (4^th NBA). This aside they can’t seem to keep it together as a unit, the individual stats look good but only shoot 45% from the field. Roy is our biggest worry, but here we match up pretty well with these guys.

The Oklahoma City Thunder in my opinion is an up and coming franchise that is good this year but is soon to be great with nowhere to go but up with time. Kevin Durant with 29.6 PPG (2^nd NBA) and Russell Westbrook with 16.1 PPG and 8 assists (7^th NBA) make a brutal one-two punch. They are just lacking that third piece of the puzzle to be a complete unit. Kevin Durant is a matchup nightmare for any team but especially the Jazz. We got rid of Brewer, and A.K. or C.J. have proven they arn’t quick enough to guard him off the dribble. Durant has gone off for 28,31,and 35 in his last three meetings. With matchups like this in a seven game series pose as huge problems.

With the regular season winding down I feel that the Jazz need to finish strong winning 5 out of the last 7 matchups. Our schedule looks like this. Home games against Golden State, Oklahoma City, and Phoenix while on the road for L.A., Houston, New Orleans and Golden State.

We have Golden State home tonight, but should be able to handle them fairly easily being home. We face the L.A. Lakers on ESPN where we don’t seem to do well at Staples Center, not to mention the big lights of Hollywood and the eyes of the nation on us. Lets chalk that one up as a loss. The next game we come back home for Oklahoma City where we are a tough bunch, protecting home court, and it’s thoughts like this that we will need for this victory. We are then on a three game road trip with Houston, New Orleans, and Golden State. I have us winning all three of these games if we keep playing strong and finishing games like we have been in the past, with hustle and bench play from Millsap and Matthews. The season finishes up with Phoenix coming into town. This is going to be a loss if the Suns are playing as well as they are right now with Amare Stoudemire averaging 32 PPG in the month of March and the headache of Nash and the fast paced style of the Suns we are accustom to.

Overall I feel that the Jazz are looking good and putting all of the final pieces to the puzzle together coming into the playoffs, but it is key for us to finish strong so that we can save as much gas in the tank as possible for the second and third rounds of the playoffs.