Utah Jazz Need To Stop Looking Back, Start Winning
The Utah Jazz have to get it together. The injuries are finished and there are no more excuses. Just go out and win.
In athletics, you can almost guarantee that injuries will occur. Injuries are what can ruin a team’s season, but they also give room for a great comeback story. However, when a team’s best player gets injured, it can destroy a team’s ability to win important games.
If you don’t believe that then ask the Memphis Grizzlies if they’d love to have Marc Gasol healthy for the rest of the season. Better yet, ask the Chicago Bulls if they’d like to have Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose healthy for an entire season. Even better, ask the Los Angeles Clippers if they’d like to have Blake Griffin healthy for an entire year.
Looking at those three teams, there is one common thread between them. They’ve never made excuses for the hand they were dealt because of the injuries they’ve endured. Instead, those teams have maximized the most out of their remaining talent of their rest of the other players on their team during the interim.
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To that end, they all have winning records and they all are going to make a lot of noise in the playoffs.
For the Utah Jazz, they’ve also been bitten by the injury bug, severely. This year in Salt Lake City has been topsy-turvy, to say the least. The Jazz started off pretty decent as they took advantage of their schedule early in the year and made it to the playoff race earlier in the year rather than later.
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What was impressive was the fact that Utah was doing it without their starting point guard Dante Exum. Many people believed that this team would falter without Exum’s presence in the lineup because they assumed that he was the catalyst of their defensive resurgence.
Now that almost seven months has gone by and Utah is still among the league leaders (No. 4 to be exact) in opponents points per game, we knew that wasn’t the case. Nevertheless, defensively Utah has still managed to do damage in the Western Conference without Exum.
That’s the reason why if the Utah Jazz don’t make the playoffs this season they have no one to blame but themselves.
The biggest difference between Utah and the other teams around the league who have suffered injuries (including the aforementioned teams) is that Utah’s been able to have their best player on the roster healthy for the entire year. Gordon Hayward has played in 62 out of 62 games and he’s putting up career numbers in scoring.
The fact that Utah doesn’t have a better record with their best player is a bit alarming but they’re still above water in the playoff race.
In all fairness to Utah, the injuries they’ve suffered this season have had dire consequences and it was expected because their top six players missed nearly 35 percent of the season. But with all the injuries this season to the best players on the team it has given Utah an opportunity to use the other players off of their bench.
Trey Lyles in his rookie season had played better than most expected and he keeps growing as a player.
Additionally, it’s also given more minutes to players such as Trey Burke, who is often maligned when he plays. The injuries have also given opportunities to lesser-known talents on the roster including Jeff Withey and Trevor Booker.
Having a solid bench is a huge part of any team’s success and because these guys off the bench have gotten confidence it’ll only help them if they do make the playoffs.
Speaking of benches, the good news is in spite of the injuries Utah is in ninth place, and they still have a chance to get the final playoff spot in the West. Moreover, the news is that shooting guard Alec Burks is close to making a return, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
If Burks comes back healthy it will give Utah a fighters chance to get their offense better quickly and help them win games easier.
For a team that’s been battling injuries the entire year, his return could be a blessing.
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But don’t only rely on Burks to lead Utah because this is a collective effort. In less than two months we’ll know if their entire effort of the roster was good enough or not.