Utah Jazz remaining schedule before the playoffs

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Here's the remaining schedule :

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Jazz are in the opening game against the Pelicans on July 30 .
And here's our strength of schedule:

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About average strength of schedule.

And here are Goldstein's projections:

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[Catchall]

Without a homecourt advantage to play for, I'm not sure how hard teams will be playing. I think they'll use this more as a tune-up process and try to protect their main players by playing them limited minutes.

The Lakers are up by 6 games in the loss column over the Clippers. That gap can't really be closed in just 8 games. If the Lakers win a couple games, they're done and can rest players. They could even fall to the 2nd seed and it wouldn't hurt their playoff draw. NOLA or Portland could be a difficult first round for them.

Looking at posts from Spurs fans, I don't get the sense that they want to compete. LMA is out for the remainder of the season, and they're fighting NOLA, Portland and Memphis for the 8th seed. I think they want to play their young guys significant minutes and draft in the lottery. It's not worth missing out on Vassell, Okoro, Williams or Nesmith just to win a few meaningless games during a botched season.

It'll also be interesting to see when Nikola Jokic comes back from having the coronavirus and how many minutes he plays.

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[KqWIN]

I honestly just want to win the first game and I want Rudy to play well versus Zion. This will be the most watched Jazz game since...Stockton and Malone?

Rest if the games are preseason. Just about getting in game shape. Seeding does not matter.

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I honestly just want to win the first game and I want Rudy to play well versus Zion. This will be the most watched Jazz game since...Stockton and Malone?

Rest if the games are preseason. Just about getting in game shape. Seeding does not matter.

I can imagine a ton of people will be rooting against Rudy. I wonder if Donovan and Rudy are fully recovered physically from COVID-19? Seems like some people, even young pro sports athletes, have complications going on for months after it.

On the positive side - our two best players have gone through it and very likely are still immune to second infection thus it's unlikely we will lose them to COVID-19 during the tournament.

[KqWIN]

I honestly just want to win the first game and I want Rudy to play well versus Zion. This will be the most watched Jazz game since...Stockton and Malone?

Rest if the games are preseason. Just about getting in game shape. Seeding does not matter.

I can imagine a ton of people will be rooting against Rudy. I wonder if Donovan and Rudy are fully recovered physically from COVID-19? Seems like some people, even young pro sports athletes, have complications going on for months after it.

On the positive side - our two best players have gone through it and very likely are still immune to second infection thus it's unlikely we will lose them to COVID-19 during the tournament.

Rudy said his smell isn't all the way back...so who knows?

I really hope he plays well. I think Orlando is actually an environment where he can really excel. He received an extremely disproportional amount of hate for his actions. I hope he can play well as some sort of internal validation because it's gotta be tough to be the world wide face of Covid. There is no doubt that the TV broadcasts will run stories about how his diagnosis ended the season/shut down the country/world.

[Inigo Montoya]

I don't know how the NBA can go forward with the season with all these players testing positive for the virus. More and more players are getting infected every day.

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I don't know how the NBA can go forward with the season with all these players testing positive for the virus. More and more players are getting infected every day.

Never let them tell you it's not all about the money! They risked every player's life and their fans' lives when they knew the virus was spreading in the states and it was just about time for someone to test positive and they waited until a player tested positive to stop play. They milked it as long as they could with no regard for the damage they could be doing. It's amazing how it's Rudy that got the brunt of all the rage when the NBA allowed it all to happen to make as much money as possible before they stopped play.

Now it's happening again. It's all but certain people will get infected and some will die(maybe not player because they are young athletes that are in great shape and have the best medical care in the world, but there will be tons of service workers that are going to be servicing this event who are going to go back to their families and spread it around. The NBA have just decided that the money is more important than that. Which is OK, I understand that at some point you have to make some concessions, but don't come at us with all that "players health is the most important thing to us" BS.

[Catchall]

Brooklyn will be missing Kyrie, Deandre Jordan and Wilson Chandler. Dinwiddie also tested positive for covid and is on the fence about going to Orlando. That's four of their rotation players.

[Catchall]

I don't know how the NBA can go forward with the season with all these players testing positive for the virus. More and more players are getting infected every day.

Never let them tell you it's not all about the money! They risked every player's life and their fans' lives when they knew the virus was spreading in the states and it was just about time for someone to test positive and they waited until a player tested positive to stop play. They milked it as long as they could with no regard for the damage they could be doing. It's amazing how it's Rudy that got the brunt of all the rage when the NBA allowed it all to happen to make as much money as possible before they stopped play.

Now it's happening again. It's all but certain people will get infected and some will die(maybe not player because they are young athletes that are in great shape and have the best medical care in the world, but there will be tons of service workers that are going to be servicing this event who are going to go back to their families and spread it around. The NBA have just decided that the money is more important than that. Which is OK, I understand that at some point you have to make some concessions, but don't come at us with all that "players health is the most important thing to us" BS.

Imagine you're Disney. You run a global sports broadcasting network with multiple channels, and you haven't had any bonafide sporting events to broadcast for 4 1/2 months.

Or, you're the league and you're looking at losing the final 20% of the season, plus the playoffs, plus the likelihood that fans and gate revenue will be very limited next season. There's even the possibility that next season could be delayed, shortened or canceled.

Yeah, these entities are pushing to maintain the continuity of their businesses. No doubt. NBA owners want to protect the value of their assets, so they'll push to re-start the games under most circumstances.

[Catchall]

Three Pels players have tested positive.

Three Nuggets' players just tested positive, and that doesn't include Jokic who is still in quarantine in Serbia. So really, it's four Nuggets players who are positive currently.

[KqWIN]

I don't know how the NBA can go forward with the season with all these players testing positive for the virus. More and more players are getting infected every day.

Never let them tell you it's not all about the money! They risked every player's life and their fans' lives when they knew the virus was spreading in the states and it was just about time for someone to test positive and they waited until a player tested positive to stop play. They milked it as long as they could with no regard for the damage they could be doing. It's amazing how it's Rudy that got the brunt of all the rage when the NBA allowed it all to happen to make as much money as possible before they stopped play.

Now it's happening again. It's all but certain people will get infected and some will die(maybe not player because they are young athletes that are in great shape and have the best medical care in the world, but there will be tons of service workers that are going to be servicing this event who are going to go back to their families and spread it around. The NBA have just decided that the money is more important than that. Which is OK, I understand that at some point you have to make some concessions, but don't come at us with all that "players health is the most important thing to us" BS.

Let me play devil's advocate here.

All sports leagues were still playing by the time Rudy was diagnosed. The NBA was the first to shut down, and the rest of the nation afterwards. As was in Rudy's case, the NBA is not faultless in their actions. But being "patient zero" or "league zero" puts you in the spotlight and you get the brunt of the blame. We really have a problem in America, and that starts with the leadership of our nation. I can't reasonably expect the NBA to be the leader and authority in a global pandemic...and yet it was, and even the NBA was late and unprepared. The NBA has responsibility to keep Rudy and the players safe, but our nation's leadership also has responsibility to take initiative and protect everyone. We see how that has gone and continues to go

As far as it being about money, it is all about the money. The money goes both ways though. The NBA players take 50% of the revenue, and if they don't play they will take significant financial loses. This obviously has differing levels of concerns between the players. Ed Davis was vocal about wanting to play, Joe Ingles less so. Having said that, the players are the one's taking on more assumed risk in this situation. However the money is split, I believe the players deserve a far bigger slice of the pie than normal.

Given the current situation in the USA, I also think the bubble increases safety. People don't care about corona here. Many don't believe it even exists. These players that are testing positive...I have a hard time believing that they caught it while following protocols as strict as those that will be in the bubble.

The people I empathize with the most are the people servicing the event. They are not entering this bubble with the same safety, and they are not coming to the bubble to earn millions of dollars. But the sad reality is that if they weren't servicing this event, they'd be servicing random people at Disney anyways. It's not a great situation here in America.

[Inigo Montoya]

I'd much rather if we didn't involve the nation's politics in this and start criticizing political figures because it's a slippery slope--we risk developing a very tense and toxic atmosphere like the Current Affairs board. I really don't want to start censoring and deleting posts, so let's keep it close as possible to basketball please.

[Inigo Montoya]

As to the issue at hand--yes, it's all about the money. I read somewhere that shutting the season down before completing a certain amount of games will cost the NBA around 2 billion dollars. So in some sense, it is very motivated by money\greed and the players also stand to lose a lot of money if the season does not resume. But I suppose that there's another side, which is that some of that $2B will also go to people with ordinary salaries who need to support their families. All the staff and people who make a living operating the day-to-day of the arenas and teams, or make a living off businesses that rely on attendance, such as food stands, restaurants, shops in the arena complex, etc. It's a complicated situation.

[TNJazz]

As to the issue at hand--yes, it's all about the money. I read somewhere that shutting the season down before completing a certain amount of games will cost the NBA around 2 billion dollars. So in some sense, it is very motivated by money\greed and the players also stand to lose a lot of money if the season does not resume. But I suppose that there's another side, which is that some of that $2B will also go to people with ordinary salaries who need to support their families. All the staff and people who make a living operating the day-to-day of the arenas and teams, or make a living off businesses that rely on attendance, such as food stands, restaurants, shops in the arena complex, etc. It's a complicated situation.

I agree that a significant portion of that potentially "lost 2B" takes into account all of the services surrounding the arenas and the workers who really need that money to help their families survive. The shame in that, is that even with the season about to resume, how many of the workers at this stadiums, the food vendors, security, custodial staff, ticket takers, etc. will be in Orlando earning a wage? NONE. While restarting does have a great deal to do about money, let's try to not forget that there are thousands of people who lost revenue outside of the players, owners, & referees, who are not included in this revenue generating restart. Wouldn't it be great if some of the recouped dollars could be targeted to those who help make the regular season games a reality who aren't a able to work?