‘The right time to play them’: Utah Jazz face a harrowing February schedule

In a vacuum, the Utah Jazz’s February schedule doesn’t appear too daunting: 14 games in total (including Tuesday’s victory over Detroit) — seven of them against teams with winning records (through Tuesday night’s slate), six against teams below .500, and one game against an opponent right at the break-even point.

Nothing too scary, right?

Well, not until you start start mentioning the actual teams involved: the Lakers coming to visit Vivint Arena, two games in Los Angeles against the Clippers, Eastern Conference contenders such as the 76ers, Bucks and Celtics.

Even many of the games against the supposedly bad teams are probably not so easy — home-and-away games against the 10-11 Charlotte Hornets, two more against a Miami Heat team that’s sputtered early this season but which had sufficient talent to make it to the NBA Finals last year.

Yeah, February will test these Jazz, and should reveal if they really are contenders or not. Not that many of them admit to approaching it that way. The natural inclination is to profess a disdain for looking ahead, for considering what might be, for focusing on anything other than the here and now: “I don’t think we’re looking at those matchups down the road and how difficult the schedule is,” coach Quin Snyder said Tuesday.

Bojan Bogdanovic, however, stands as proof that such sentiment is not universally true.

The Croatian sharpshooter instead gave an enthusiastic, bring-it-on-and-let’s-see-what-we’ve-got response when queried about what’s to come.

“I think that is good for us to face all those great teams now in in February, because we are in great shape. We are playing good basketball, we are defending well, so I think that it is the right time for us to play all of them,” he said in the aftermath of the victory over the Pistons. “It’s a tough schedule — we’ve got a lot of great teams from the East coming here, and we’ve got this road trip in front of us. But like I said, we are in great shape and it’s good timing for us to play all of them.”

The Jazz will begin, as he mentioned, with a three-game trip to, respectively, Atlanta, Charlotte and Indiana.

Through Tuesday, the Hawks stood at 10-10 overall. They are among the league’s best at preventing opponents from scoring off of turnovers and fast breaks, and they hold foes to some of the lowest field-goal and 3-point percentages. Like the Jazz, they’re one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the league. And though the Jazz dealt Trae Young one of his worst performances in their prior meeting back on Jan. 15, he remains a top-10 scorer at 26.9 points per game.

The Hornets, whom the Jazz will face on Friday, are fourth in the league in forcing turnovers, and third in turning turnovers into points. They’re also one of the NBA’s better passing teams, ranking at or near the top is assist percentage, assist ratio and assist-to-turnover ratio. They also are, however, one of the most susceptible to allowing fast-break points. Former Jazz forward Gordon Hayward is having a resurgent season for the Hornets, posting Utah-era averages of 22.9 points, 5.2 rebounds and 3.6 assists, while shooting 50.3% from the field and 43.0% from beyond the arc.

Sunday’s opponent, Indiana, stands at 12-9 at the moment, and is powered by an inside-out attack that features the most points in the paint per game (54.9), and the third-highest percentage of points scored in the paint (48.1%). They Pacers are incredibly efficient in scoring off of turnovers. Defensively, thanks to Myles Turner’s incredible shot-blocking, they lead the league in that category. Domantas Sabonis is headed for another All-Star season, averaging 21.1 points, 12.0 rebounds and 5.7 assists, while shooting 55.9% overall and 35.2% from deep.

It’s a trip featuring a trio of opponents who, while not particularly imposing, are also not to be taken lightly, a triumvirate that will serve as an effective kick-off for the month of tests to come.

Snyder, of course, would not concede to looking at anything down the road, insisting, “The best thing we can do is continue to try to get better, whatever the circumstances.

“… I don’t know how deep into it that you’re aware of it,” Snyder added. “It’s like when you go on the road — you know you have a three-, four- or five[-game]-long road trip, there’s definitely an awareness about it, but if you look too far forward, you overlook certain games and certain situations. No different than anything. One of the things that our team has really done a good job of is staying present.”

Mike Conley, of whom Donovan Mitchell said Tuesday he teased relentlessly about being one of the “old guys” on the team, naturally took the same kind of measured approach as his coach.

The ideal, he insisted, is to keep the focus narrow and to worry only about themselves.

“The thing that’s helped our success so far is we’ve just taken it game by game,” Conley said. “We’re not really worried about the schedule or how strong or weak or who our opponent is the next night, on back-to-backs — we’re just going in on that night trying to play our basketball and trying to do what we do best. And if it’s enough, we’ll win — we’ll win these games against the good teams. As long as we go out and execute the way we know we can — and obviously we want to play well, we want to do well against the good teams — but just taking it one by one is the way to go.”