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Game Information
Who: Golden State Warriors (40-10) vs. Utah Jazz (21-28)
When: 6:00 PM PST - Tuesday, January 30
Where: Vivint Smart Home Arena
TV: CSBA
Radio: 95.7 THE GAME
The other corner’s blog: SLC Dunk
Injury Report
Warriors
Jordan Bell (questionable)
Patrick McCaw (probable)
Stephen Curry (probable)
Jazz
Dante Exum (out)
Thabo Sefolosha (out)
Mo’ Curry, mo’ problems
The last time the Golden State Warriors played the Utah Jazz, Stephen Curry was out with his ankle injury, and the Warriors still pulled off a 25-point blowout win.
Since coming back from that ankle sprain, Curry has been on an absolute tear. If you didn’t catch his latest gem against the Boston Celtics over the weekend — well, do yourself a favor and watch this before continuing on.
Curry’s been scoring 31.5 points on an absurd 75 true-shooting percentage since his return. For reference, he averaged 30.1 points on a 66.9 TS% for his unanimous MVP season. Good luck to the rest of the NBA.
As of now, Curry is listed on the Warriors’ injury report with shoulder soreness. But if he ends up playing like Steve Kerr expects him to, the odds I give the Jazz to steal a win drops from about 0.01% to a flat zero.
Bounce back games for our other stars
While Curry had an otherworldly night against the Celtics, the other Warriors’ all-stars had a rough outing. Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green combined for 42 points on 41 shots. Thompson was especially cold, only scoring seven points for the game.
It’s rare to see most of our guys with back-to-back bad games and so it wouldn’t be shocking to see at least two if not all of them having good bounce-back performances against Utah.
Perhaps a Donovan Mitchell sighting
Gordon Hayward might’ve knocked the air out of Utah when he jumped ship to the Celtics. But Mitchell came aboard and breathed new life into that franchise by being one of the best amongst this year’s draft class.
Last time these two teams faced off, I was excited to finally watch Mitchell in action, as I had only read tales of his impressive rookie campaign up to that point.
Unfortunately Thompson and the rest of the Warriors squad had other plans for the rookie, as their stifling defense held him to an inefficient 6-for-17 shooting night.
He does perform a tad bit better at home, so we’ll see how he fares in Utah this time around. But one of the biggest issues the Jazz have is the lack of offensive weapons on their roster and in particular their starting five.
That was probably one of the reasons why the Warriors were able to hone in and focus on containing Mitchell.
The scoring issue with the Jazz starters
As highlighted by Zach Lowe in the latest column of his 10 things I like and don’t like series, Utah’s combination of Rudy Gobert, Derrick Favors and Ricky Rubio has been atrocious on the floor together.
It doesn’t get any better when you include the other two starters in Mitchell and Joe Ingles, as the Jazz still average a putrid 86.9 points per 100 possessions with that combination sharing the court.
Until the Jazz find a way to reliably score the ball, another blowout win by the Warriors isn’t entirely out of the question.
Predictions
Final score: Warriors 124 - Jazz 102