Why the Utah Jazz will continue to slip in the Wild West

The Utah Jazz have been near the bottom of the Western Conference so far this season. Here’s why things will remain tough before they get better for Utah.

After somewhat of a surprisingly successful season a year ago, the Utah Jazz have gotten off to a slow start in the 2018-19 NBA campaign.

Last season, the Jazz put together a stellar second half of the regular season to finish with a 51-31 record and made a push into the postseason as the 5-seed — all just a few months after their former franchise player, Gordon Hayward, left Utah to sign with the Boston Celtics in the offseason.

This year, with its roster virtually constructed the same way, Utah has gotten off to a rough start while floating around the .500 mark in the once again impressively tight Western Conference standings.

Although the Jazz are certainly capable of putting together a run like they did last year with the NBA season still in the early stages, things look like they will remain tough for Utah as we head into the holidays.

The Jazz are coming off of a 102-97 road loss to the Houston Rockets on Monday night, a game they fell behind in early, managing to make things interesting in the end by fighting their way back only to fall short.

With that loss, the Jazz now sit with the second-worst record in the West (14-17), ahead of only the Phoenix Suns (7-24). Although that may sound bad, Utah is just seven games out of the top spot in the conference and are just 2.5 games back of the 7-seed in the playoff race.

That’s how crazy close and even things have been in the Western Conference so far this season.

Looking ahead to the rest of the 2018 calendar year and into the early stages of 2019, however, things could go from not-too-terrible to ugly for the Jazz, considering their current state within the conference and the caliber of teams they have due up on their schedule.

If you look at Utah’s upcoming schedule for the next four weeks, you’ll see it’s filled with some of the top talent the NBA has to offer this season.

From Wednesday leading up to Jan. 11, which consists of 12 games, 10 of those games will come against teams that are either right at the .500 mark — similar to Utah — or at the top of their respective conferences.

That includes facing teams such as the Golden State Warriors, Portland Trail Blazers (twice), Oklahoma City Thunder, Philadelphia 76ers, Toronto Raptors, Detroit Pistons, Milwaukee Bucks, Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Lakers. The only two games the Jazz will play against a team worse than them record-wise will be against the New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers.

That’s a tough stretch, for any team.

After that point, Utah doesn’t really catch a break in its schedule until the start of February, when it faces a handful of teams below .500 at home.

If we learned anything from last year’s Jazz team, though, it’s that they are capable of fixing things and pushing themselves back up into the playoff hunt.

But Utah might need to pull together a stretch similar to what they pulled off a season ago if they want to continue to hang in the thick of things in a very wild, very tight Western Conference this year.