The Utah Jazz are a team who traded away Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert in their offseason. They got a haul back in exchange for those players, and it's absolutely paying off for them. The Jazz have played 5 games so far, they have played Denver, Minnesota and New Orleans in two separate thrilling OT games. They were 3-0 at one point during the season, undefeated, what the hell is going on?! This team is supposed to be tanking right, rebuilding, starting from scratch, but it's working? As Doc Rivers and many others said ,"If it ain't broke don't fix it". This team is legit. They are not contenders just yet, my logic is I don't judge the beginning of the season very heavily but I can't not see what I'm seeing. The Pelicans made the playoffs last year and people were wondering how they made it without Zion. They had a solid team in Jose Alvarado, Brandon Ingram, Jonas Valanciunas, and bucket getter C.J. McCollum. They competed against the #1 team in the league, the Suns during the playoffs and were knotted at 2-2 at one point. This is how I see the Utah Jazz evolving. They'll be a playoff team, they'll be under looked as a team that just so happened to be 4-1 at one point, but they'll surprise you. Lauri Markhannen is leading the team in points at 22 per game, Jordan Clarkson is their bucket getter as he averages almost 19 points a game, and Colin Sexton is playing great defense and contributing 10 points a game. The thing about this team is they're not a contender, but when you look at their roster, they're depth is insanely impressive. They have Rudy Gay at the end of their bench, they have 21 year old Talen Horton-Tucker only getting 15 minutes a game, they have Jarred Vanderbilt, Kelly Olynyk averaging 13 points a game and at 68.8 3 point percentage so far. Finally, they have Markhannen as their go to forward. Then you look at the guards, of course they have Colin Sexton, they still have Mike Conley, the bucket getter Jordan Clarkson, and Malik Beasley averaging 12 points a game and shooting 42 percent from three. I expect this deep team to challenge the top dogs of the NBA come playoff time. How about that for a way too early season prediction?
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