The Utah Jazz Are About To Make The Wrong Kind of History

The NBA began having 82 regular season games during the 1967-1968 season.

Since then, 82 contest per year has been the norm, barring lockout shortened/ Covid abbreviated seasons.

With so many games on the slate, it can be easy to assume that such a time period gives some pretty well balanced results.

41 home and 41 road games make it seem as if bad teams would be given time to get better and more consistent as the season wears on right?

Well, not necessarily.

When a team starts the long season out in uninspiring fashion, they typically stay bad through the rest of the year.

Out of the NBA’s current 30 teams, 29 have of them have had at least one season in their history where they have tallied up 60 losses or more.

That means that even the very best 60 loss teams would have roughly a winning percentage of 36, well below even half their games at 22 wins.

Every team has dealt with atrocious seasons, all that is, but the Utah Jazz by the 60 loss definition.

The Jazz are the only team in NBA history to have never suffered a season with 60 or more losses as one of the most winningest regular season organizations in the league based on franchises overall records.

Sure they’ve been close before, going 24-58 in the 1979-80 season or 25-57 during the Ty Corbin era of 2013-14.

Even the New Orleans iteration of the team flirted with it, hitting 59 losses in 1974-75, but never have they ever crossed that line.

That is most likely, until this year.

With 8 games left in the season, the Jazz are already tied with the 1979-80 team with the most losses ever suffered by the team since moving to Salt Lake City, currently boasting a 16-58 record.

They are one slip up away from being the worst team in Utah’s history and two away from joining 29 other teams with at least one 60 loss season.

Considering the Jazz currently hold the worst record in the NBA by a 0.5 game over the Washington Wizards, are in the midst of a 4 game losing streak and are 1-9 in their last 10 games, Jazz fans can likely expect that stand alone achievement to be snapped.

Utah’s current 14 % chance at the #1 overall pick, mixed with a 52.1 % chance of a top 4 selection, both tied for the best chances of anyone in the NBA, means that the Jazz likely aren’t about to mess with the current flow of things.

Even if Utah decided they really wanted to pull out a few more victories down the road, the odds would already be stacked against them.

Starting tonight in Denver, the Jazz are beginning a 5 game road trip and play 6 of their last 8 away from the Delta Center.

Utah is 7-28 out of state this year.

6 of their final 8 opponents are jockeying for postseason positioning in the standings and will be giving it their all, Utah has legitimately nothing to play for outside of the moral victories department.

Putting two and two together simply means Utah isn't just likely to eclipse the 60 loss mark, but blow right on by with ease.

It isn't official yet, but unless Utah goes 7-1 to finish the year, the Jazz are about to be the last team to fall victim to 60 losses on a year, and ironically enough Jazz fans likely couldn’t be happier.