Before the cherished basketball traditions of March Madness and the NBA playoffs arrive with all their tantalizing fanfare, the hoops world must first endure an entirely different matchup.
Far on the other end of the anticipation spectrum, the Washington Wizards take on the Utah Jazz on Wednesday night in Salt Lake City.
Though this contest doesn’t have the hype and hoopla of other fun spring matchups — the teams have combined to win just 30 of 136 games — the bottom of the basketball barrel brawl does carry significant implications.
The loser between the Jazz (15-54) and the Wizards (15-52) will have a leg up — protruding from its proverbial end-of-season coffin — when it comes to its chances of securing one of the top picks in the NBA draft lottery.
Washington will be without at least one of its key players when visiting Utah. The team announced on Tuesday that Corey Kispert had season-ending surgery to repair a ligament tear in his left thumb. The forward, who averaged 11.6 points, was injured in Saturday’s 126-123 win at Denver.
Marcus Smart (illness), Malcolm Brogdon (ankle), Bilal Coulibaly (hamstring) and Saddiq Bey (knee) also missed Washington’s most recent game, a 112-97 loss Monday at Portland.
That defeat came after the Wizards had pulled off two upsets in a row at Detroit and at Denver.
The game against the Jazz wraps up a seven-game road trip, during which Washington has managed a 3-3 split in arguably its best stretch of the season. The
Wizards have gone 6-5 in their last 11, including a 125-122 victory over Utah on March 5 at home.
AJ Johnson, the 23rd overall pick in the 2024 draft, provided a nice spark for Washington on Monday in his first start. He recorded eight points, seven rebounds and four assists — although with six turnovers — in 35 minutes.
“It was definitely an adjustment coming in starting and playing right away, but I felt like I handled it pretty well,” Johnson said. “There’s always room for growth, but I’m definitely looking forward to playing more.”
Utah enters this game on a 10-game losing streak, but Jazz coach Will Hardy remained positive after his team’s 111-97 home loss to the Chicago Bulls on Monday night.
“I actually feel really good about the team’s effort tonight,” Hardy said. “The guys competed really hard. I think 17 turnovers hurt us a bit. Give Chicago credit; they kept us off the offensive glass with only four offensive rebounds tonight. And the reality is we couldn’t stretch their defense out enough because we didn’t make any threes.”
The most glaring stat from the home loss was the 9-for-42 shooting (21.4 percent) from beyond the arc. Even Utah big man Walker Kessler got into the action, missing all five 3-point attempts to fall to 3-for-17 this season. He made 1 of 6 from 3-point range Sunday at Minnesota, so this seems like a full-blown experiment.
“Coach is a big proponent of players trying to get better and expand their games,” Kessler said. “We’ve had conversations before about this my first two years, even this year, and he knows that that can be an expansion and a part of my game.”
This is the second game in a six-game homestand for Utah — and certainly the most winnable based on records. Up next for the Jazz: Boston, Cleveland, Memphis and Houston followed by six of their final eight games on the road.
