Nobody gives the Utah Jazz a whole lot of respect. OK, maybe that is an overly broad statement. But you sure don’t hear the Jazz mentioned among the teams most often mentioned as legitimate championship contenders. Right now, they are 60-1 to bring home the Larry O’Brien trophy.
But that would be in the distant future. Tonight is the near future, and nothing spells F-U-N like a Friday night in Salt Lake City.
OK, that’s a tad harsh. The one thing about Utah: It is easy to make fun of.
And in the new landscape that is the United States sports gambling world, the go-to line is often: “We’ll eventually have 50 different laws in 50 different states … except we will always have Utah — which means 49 laws in 49 states.”
Here is the thing about the Jazz that is most relevant going into tonight’s ESPN game against Golden State: The Jazz are more than capable of beating the Warriors, and beating them decisively.
Last season, they beat them by 30 points twice and 19 points once — something Jermaine O’Neal seized upon when I interviews him this summer in Brooklyn at a Big 3 event.
JERMAINE O’NEAL LIKES THE UTAH JAZZ AS UNDERDOG TITLE CONTENDER
The line for tonight’s game is Warriors -2 1/2, because sportsbooks have to set the line in a place where they believe action will come in equally on both sides … and it is not often that Golden State is favored by that small of an amount.
For those who believe in history repeating itself, there is a nifty alternative: Betting the Jazz to win, and spreading some money around on winning margin wagers.
Click on the chart below if you like any of these moneymaking opportunities.
A guy I know put $10 on all Jazz winning margins.
He has a cat on his lap and is typing at the moment.
There are those who play one or two games a night, folks who like to parlay two or three more bets, etc. And even though the folks who pay the bills at this site are offshore and do not want to lose money, they put items on the board that backfire on them from time to time.
My job — both for myself and my readers — is to try to spot those opportunities.
So first things first: The Warriors are a damn good team, and it’ll be hard for anyone to come out of the West ahead of them.
Difficult, but not impossible.
Just ask the Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder and a couple of other teams (Portland first among them) whose hopes have been buoyed by what happened over the first three nights of the season.
Golden State defeated Oklahoma City by 8 points on Opening Night, and Utah rode the second-half play of Dante Exum (who supplanted Ricky Rubio in the rotation on Jazz Night One) to defeat Sacramento 123-117.
Donovan Mitchell (24 points), Joe Ingles (22 points, six assists, four steals) and Rudy Gobert (19 points, 15 rebounds, three blocks) had particularly good nights. Exum, Alec Burks and Jae Crowder were key bench contributors.
So both teams are riding a teeny-tiny head of steam as we all get ready for ESPN’s first Friday night NBA doubleheader, and this is going to be a relatively rare chance to see the Jazz and the Warriors go at each other.
The teams will play only three times this season, just once in Golden State.
Last season, the Jazz lost the first of four meetings by 25 points, then won 129-99 on Jan. 30; 110-91 on March 25 and 119-79 on April 19. Four games; four ass-kickings.
So why should tonight be different? This is why we play the games and find out.
With that in mind, there are prop bets all over the board at BetDSI involving this game, and all of the others. Here are the Warriors-Jazz props:
Good luck!
