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Last year the Jazz ended the regular season with a record of 51-31....now back in December, some people we saying that the Jazz would be lucky to end up with 45 wins, let along 50+ wins....

There are 33 games left in the season...The Jazz are currently 31-18..do you think the Jazz can end the season with a record of 20-13 or better...and end up tying or beating last years win-loss record!?!?

We have 17 home games left and 16 road games left...

Our toughest road games will be: At Denver, At Boston, At Dallas, At Phoenix, and At San Antonio, as well as 2 at New Orleans (although Im not too worried about those...we should win at least 1).

Our toughest home games will be: Pistons, Mavericks,Spurs, Lakers, and 2 visits by the Nuggets.

This week I think we will really find out how good this team really is

We would have to go 21 and 12 to surpass our record from last yr, which is really attainable and not unrealistic. I think we can do it.

Jazz maybe lose 2 or 3 more at home. That would mean 10 more road losses on ther road, and I don't see the Jazz going 6-10 on the road for the rest of the season.

If the Jazz finish .500 on the road the rest of the season, all we need to do is win 12 more games at home which is pretty much a given.

I agree....even if the Jazz go 8-8 on the road, they could go 12-5 at home and still end up with 51 wins. I think the Jazz could get 9-11 road wins and at least 12-14 home wins.

Im prediciting the Jazz end the season with between 53-55 wins.

what was our record at the same time last year?

LJ,

We were 32-17 at this same time last year.

We then proceeded to go 19-14.

Its amazing that even after that HORRIBLE December we are still only a game off of last years pace.

I don't think we match last year's pace. We've hit a nice portion of our schedule, and I think that has a lot to do with our 9 game winning streak, moreso than the addition of Korver.

I hope I'm wrong, we have another game vs. Denver that'll tell a lot about the rest of this season.

Damn we need to beat Denver in their shack. If we can do that, I will be sold that we are officially back as scary playoff opponents......

Oh and I don't think we are as good as last year's team. Why? 2 reasons. Last year's team overcame big deficits (some as many as 16-21 points in the 4th quarter ALONE) to win games on the road. This year's team has blown leads to lose close games.

2) Look at some of this season's wins. We caught Houston without Yao. WE got Phoenix at home without Nash and Marion. We caught the Wizards without Butler (an East All-Star). We beat the Spurs while Parker was clearly hurt...

Last year's team had mental toughness. I'm not sold yet that this team has that.

Malone Strong wrote:Oh and I don't think we are as good as last year's team. Why? 2 reasons. Last year's team overcame big deficits (some as many as 16-21 points in the 4th quarter ALONE) to win games on the road. This year's team has blown leads to lose close games.

2) Look at some of this season's wins. We caught Houston without Yao. WE got Phoenix at home without Nash and Marion. We caught the Wizards without Butler (an East All-Star). We beat the Spurs while Parker was clearly hurt...

Last year's team had mental toughness. I'm not sold yet that this team has that.

1. How many games have the Jazz gone into the 4th quarter trailing by 15-20 points? Maybe 4, maybe.

2. You can only beat the teams that are put in front of you, we also faced Portland during their hottest streak in 5 years 2 times, we have had one of the toughest schedules in the NBA so far and we are still in first place in the North West division.

I still think the defense is not there, and that Deron is not disciplined enough. Also I am fearful that Boozer is not the rebounding genius he used to be, or Kirilenko being the Paint shot blocker he used to be.

Even then, I think we have improved, and if we get more crazy outings by Okurver, then perhaps the zone defense will be witheld with more consistency.

I think we will get close to matching it... I expect a +/- 3 games from last year's record

I think that honestly we can get about 3-5 games above last year.

I see about 53 or 54 wins, most likely.

You can make excuses for the other teams all you want, but this is the NBA, and teams have to win games without their stars. You could just as easily point to Okur missing those games with the bum shoulder, with Andrei being out part of the time as well, and the season long malaise for Memo, too, as reasons why its OK that we lost. But at the end of the day, even W and L counts just the same.

Likewise, we could point to the win vs. LA with BOTH Booz and Memo out as a game that easily makes up for the Phoenix game. We could have lost that game and everyone written it off as a no-win situation because of the missing guys, but we played inspired ball and guys came through big. Phoenix still had Amare, Barbosa and Bell, and we were missing Harps. Not only did we win, we went for the jugular early and ripped it out. That counts for something.

We have beaten Portland, Houston, SA, Phoenix, NO, LAL, and GS, leaving just Denver and Dallas among the West's playoff contenders that we haven't beaten, having played each just once and on their home floor. Not only that, we took SA, Pho and Dallas down to the wire on the road during our worst stretch of the season ON THEIR FLOORS, along with Boston on ours. I think its fair to say that we have played well enough against the best this year throughout.

Our real problems have been losing to bad teams on the road. Something that seems to have been corrected of late, but which was a huge issue earlier. We've lost to Charlotte, NY, Indy, Atlanta, and Miami on the road this year. If we win just those games, we are on top of the West right now. Think about that.

We'll definitely finish over what we did last year. I think the reason we played bad in December had to do with trade talk distractions, and Korver has made us such a better team that it's hard to imagine us not being able to close out better given that we're certainly on pace to finish at least as well, and we're the hottest team since December 31st.

Malone Strong wrote:Oh and I don't think we are as good as last year's team. Why? 2 reasons. Last year's team overcame big deficits (some as many as 16-21 points in the 4th quarter ALONE) to win games on the road. This year's team has blown leads to lose close games.

2) Look at some of this season's wins. We caught Houston without Yao. WE got Phoenix at home without Nash and Marion. We caught the Wizards without Butler (an East All-Star). We beat the Spurs while Parker was clearly hurt...

Last year's team had mental toughness. I'm not sold yet that this team has that.

Needless to say that is a terrible argument. We did that in the firs half of the season where we could come back. The second half we just got beat. This team is a lot more consistent, and although we had the losing streak, we didn't get blown out all that much. Last year in the second half of the season we let teams back in the game from big comebacks ala Miami in Miami. This I think is a better more consistent team.

I think we'll beat last years record and end up with 53-55 wins. Our remaining schedule should help us accomplisht that. We've got 17 more home games and 16 away games. Including tonight's game, only 6 of those 16 away games are against teams above .500. Also, we go through a nice strech in March/April where we'll play 8 of 9 at home. Also, we only have 1 more long road trip, but it's just a 4 game trip and we play the Bulls, Bucks, Celtics, and Nets, so it shouldn't be too bad.

I think that tonights game is a big sign to how the rest of the year is going to play out.

Hikari wrote:I think that tonights game is a big sign to how the rest of the year is going to play out.

Yeah, but there were about 80 people that said that about the NO game. If they were right, than we're gonna have one hell of a finish.