One of my favorite things to do as a sportswriter is look back at my own predictions and see how accurate — or, alternatively, how utterly inaccurate — they are in hindsight.
Exhibit A: the Utah Jazz. I thought the Jazz were, well, the Jazz. They went 48-34 in the 2017-18 season, the first of Donovan Mitchell’s career, and lost in the Western Conference Semifinals as the fifth seed. They went 50-32 in the 2018-19 season, and were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs as the fifth seed. They went 44-28 in 2019-20, losing to the Nuggets in the first round of the Orlando bubble postseason as the sixth seed. Between this season and last season, they made minimal changes. There was the potential for existing tension between Rudy Gobert and his teammates after his coronavirus slip-up early in the pandemic. There were rivals in the West who got stronger.
And, for all of the above reasons, I listed the Jazz at No. 12 in my power rankings, saying that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but also doubting that they did much to establish themselves as a Finals contender. In fact, no one on our RADIO.COM Sports panel ranked the Jazz in the top ten. So, of course, the Jazz stand alone with a 27-9 record at this point, they’re a top-five team in both offensive and defensive rating, and have an unbelievable +8.9 net rating as they sit in first place. As they say, you win some, you lose some.
In terms of the “win some” part of that aforementioned adage, though, I correctly expressed some concern about the Celtics’ depth, I saw the Suns as a “big underdog” in the West, and I was generally accurate in terms of laying out playoff-bound teams, rebuilding teams, and those lost in no-man’s land.
Let’s take a look at how the association stacks up as we begin the second half of the 2020-21 season, with my preseason power rankings shamelessly listed next to each team, for your entertainment and for my bragging rights or humiliation, depending on the team.
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