The battle of the small market teams! This NBA Playoff prediction won’t get much national attention. It still has the potential to be a great series. Each team seemed to match up with who they want. The Nuggets wanted to face the Jazz and I’m sure the Jazz wanted to face the Nuggets. Now that they are matched up together, who wins the matchup?
Utah Jazz
I thought the Jazz were done for as soon as they lost Bojan Bogdanovic. I mean, obviously they already clinched a playoff spot, but I thought for sure they would move down to 7th. They did drop from 4th to 6th, some kind of drop was expected. You don’t lose your 2nd best scorer and not drop, it’s inevitable. How does the Jazz line up with the Nuggets? They match up better than some might think. While Rudy Gobert is slightly overrated on defense for my taste, he is still a good defensive player. He might have a chance to disrupt Nikola Jokic some. However, Jokic is the best center in the league, he’s still going to contribute to his team any way he can. Donovan Mitchell is a baller too. He is still going to get his points and try his best to hold this team up. One of my favorite things about this team was how much depth they had. They’re a pretty deep team that has a bench that can keep them in games. They still have Mike Conley and Jordan Clarkson. These 4 guys are going to keep the Jazz in a lot of games, are they going to win some of those too?
Denver Nuggets
If you watched the Nuggets, you knew that the emergence of Michael Porter Jr. was inevitable. He has arrived and damn is he good or what? There haven’t been many teams to keep up with him. It doesn’t matter if he’s only a 2nd-year player, or technically a rookie since he didn’t play last year. With Jamal Murray, the Nuggets have a solid young big 3 going on that makes them dangerous. They’ll all be able to contribute. Much like the Jazz, the Nuggets have a crazy deep team as well. Their bench will keep them in games and win a lot of games for them. The Nuggets are a dark-horse team to make the Finals. If you don’t think so, you gotta watch more Nuggets basketball. They have improved every year on defense and their offense can keep up with the best in the league.
Prediction:
This NBA playoff prediction should be fun to keep track of to most basketball heads. They’ll be a lot of fundamental basketball in this one. The curse of small-market teams won’t give this series a lot of national attention. But it is a great way to watch how sneaky good the Nuggets are. The Jazz has shown that their defense is still stout. Their slow-as-molasses pace is Quin Snyder’s specialty. This can disrupt Denver’s offense. Will it be enough to beat them though? I don’t think so. What it comes down to is that the Jazz doesn’t have enough offense to keep up with the Nuggets. I think Denver will have one bad shooting night and the Jazz will take advantage, other than that, the Jazz are toast.
Nuggets in 5.
