Utah Jazz at Milwaukee Bucks: Keys to the Game

The Utah Jazz will look to come out of the gates strong following the All-Star break as they take on the Milwaukee Bucks tonight in the first game of a three-game road trip.

It wasn’t long ago that the Utah Jazz and Milwaukee Bucks faced off in Salt Lake City in what ended up being a comfortable 104-88 win for the Jazz. By holding Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo to just nine points on 2-of-10 shooting while Gordon Hayward and Rudy Gobert finished with 27 and 26 points, respectively, it was a very convincing Utah victory.

And in this first game back after the All-Star break, it will be critical that Utah take care of business once again against a struggling Bucks team, despite the fact that the game will be played on Milwaukee’s home court.

While the Bucks’ 25-30 record speaks for itself in terms of the difficulties they’ve faced this year, they recently experienced an even more bitter hardship as their second leading scorer Jabari Parker went down with yet another ACL injury on the same knee he hurt in his rookie season.

It’s a shame to see a team with so much promising young talent be derailed in such a way, especially considering that Khris Middleton, another rising Bucks star, had missed most of the season prior to the All-Star break and was just getting back into his stride when Parker went down.

Yet although the Jazz have experience beating the Bucks and will go up against them without one of their best players in Parker, Utah will still need to make sure they avoid a post-break hangover and come out ready to roll. With the entire Jazz team participating in yesterday’s practice and therefore presumably healthy, it will be exciting to see what the Jazz are truly capable of as they start the stretch run of the season.

And if they hope to get off to that good start that I mentioned, they’ll particularly need to be at the top of their game in the following areas.