Where Do Jazz Project To Finish In Playoff Seedings?

Mar 3, 2022, 2:11 PM

Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert challenges Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

(Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

Utah Jazz Insider

SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah Jazz currently sit in the fourth seed with just 21 games left in the Western Conference playoff race.

How likely are they to hold onto the spot, and who are they most likely going to face in the opening round of the playoffs?

With a little over five weeks left before the postseason, let’s take a look at the Western Conference playoff picture, and where the Jazz fit in.

Current Standings

Phoenix Suns
Golden State Warriors 7.0 games back
Memphis Grizzlies: 7.5 games back
Utah Jazz: 10.5 games back
Dallas Mavericks: 13 games back
Denver Nuggets: 14 games back

The Suns’ stranglehold on the Western Conference is nearly impenetrable at this point, and have a better than 99 percent chance of owning the best record at season’s end.

Even with Chris Paul out for the next month and Devin Booker in the Health and Safety Protocols, the Suns are at very little risk of losing the top seed in the postseason.

Until recently it looked like Golden State was a safe pick at number two, but after losing six of their last eight, while trying to get Klay Thompson and Draymond Green back to full health before the playoffs, they have the Grizzlies right on their tail.

Memphis sits just a half-game back of the Warriors and has a significantly easier close to the season. According to Tankathon, the Grizzlies have the second easiest schedule left over the final quarter of the season, while the Warriors have the seventh most difficult.

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The Jazz meanwhile find themselves in a strange midpoint between the two teams vying for the second and third seed in the West, and the teams battling to avoid the play-in tournament in fifth and sixth.

Dallas sits just 2.5 games back of the Jazz for the seed in the West, while the Grizzlies sit 3.0 games ahead of the Jazz for the third seed, and Golden State sits 3.5 games ahead of the Jazz for the second seed.

With Memphis’ easy remaining schedule, and owning the tiebreaker over the Jazz having already won two of the teams’ three matchups this season, catching the Grizzlies seems like a long shot.

According to basketball-reference’s playoff probability simulations, Memphis has a 42 percent chance of finishing with the third seed, and a slightly lower 41 percent chance of finishing with the second seed.

Similarly, Golden State has a 51 percent chance of finishing with the second seed, and a 47 percent chance of falling to either third or fourth.

The Jazz have the 13th most difficult remaining schedule per Tankathon, and another matchup with the Warriors in the fifth to final game of the season, which could play a major role in their playoff seeding.

However, according to basketball-reference, the Jazz are overwhelmingly favored to remain in the fourth seed. In 64 percent of the site’s simulations, the Jazz stay put at fourth. In 20 percent of the projections, the Jazz leap either Golden State or Memphis for the three seed, and fall to fifth or the sixth seed just nine percent of the time.

Teamed with their six percent chance of leaping both Golden State and Memphis, basketball-reference projects the Jazz to have a 90 percent chance of owning home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

Conversely, the site doesn’t give either the Mavericks or the Nuggets a great shot to open the postseason on their home floor.

While the Mavericks are overwhelming favorites to secure the fifth seed with nearly 63 percent of projections keeping them in their current seed, basketball-reference sees Dallas overtaking the Jazz only eight percent of the time before the end of the regular season.

Likewise, Denver is projected to finish with the sixth seed 54 percent of the time, while climbing to the fifth seed 22 percent of the time. But with the Jazz owning a 3.5 game lead and the season tiebreaker, the Nuggets leap the Jazz and Mavericks or the fourth seed in only 2.2 percent of the projections.

With 21 games left to play, the Jazz aren’t locked into the fourth seed, though that is by far their most likely final seeding. While that’s a step backward from last season when they finished with the best record in the NBA, they have had success against their most likely opponents in the opening round.

In six meetings this season, the Jazz are undefeated against the Mavericks and Nuggets.

Dallas will host the Jazz on Monday in their third meeting of the season, and the two teams will meet again at American Airlines Center on March 27. Both games are likely to have an enormous impact on the final standings, and the confidence levels of the two teams heading into the postseason.