Griffin Wong breaks down his analysis, prediction, and pick for Jazz at Nets on Thursday.

Inter-conference clashes are the theme of this Thursday on the featured NBA slate, with three of the five contests set to take place today matching up a Western Conference team against an Eastern Conference team. Some of the matchups are marquee, featuring each conference’s second seed if the season ended today (the Los Angeles Lakers in the West and the Toronto Raptors in the East) while others — such as the meeting between the Utah Jazz and the Brooklyn Nets — aren’t so widely anticipated.

That game will tip off from Barclays Center at 7:30 p.m. ET. Besides the long-term injuries to Cam Thomas and Haywood Highsmith, the Nets are also missing Michael Porter Jr. and Drake Powell as they manage injuries. The Jazz might be thin at center: in addition to Walker Kessler, who’s out for the season, Jusuf Nurkić is questionable with a rib contusion and Kevin Love is resting.

Utah is a 5.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-198 on the Moneyline), and the point total is set to 231.5. Brooklyn is +164 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down tonight’s battle for lottery positioning and offer my prediction.

Utah Jazz at Brooklyn Nets preview, prediction

After entering the season widely expected to be the league’s worst, the Jazz have over-performed expectations so far and, at 7-13, would be just one game out of a Play-In Tournament spot if the season ended today. In their most recent game, they got redemption for a lopsided loss to the Houston Rockets by edging out an eight-point win at the Delta Center on the second night of a back-to-back. Utah has several promising players in Keyonte George (22.8 points and 6.9 assists per game), Lauri Markkanen (28.0 points per game), and rookie Ace Bailey, who’s averaged 13.8 points per game on 53-40-78 shooting splits in the 11 games since the Jazz inserted him into the starting lineup. Kyle Filipowski and Cody Williams are still works in progress, but Utah is on the come-up.

The Nets are farther behind in their rebuilding process than Utah, though they’ve actually won each of their last two games, including a 113-103 triumph over the Chicago Bulls, who briefly held the conference’s No. 1 seed before falling off dramatically. But while Bailey and George have produced flashes as youngsters for the Jazz, none of Brooklyn’s five first-round picks look like they’ll be long-term starters in the league. Egor Dëmin, a sharp-shooting Russian the Nets took eighth overall, is the only regular starter of the bunch, though Danny Wolf has canned 47.1% of his triples in low volume. Third-year pro Noah Clowney could be a plus starter eventually, but he hasn’t been very efficient.

Jazz at Nets pick, best bet

There shouldn’t be much defense in this game: Utah ranks fourth-to-last in defensive rating and Brooklyn third-to-last, and while the Nets usually keep the score line manageable by playing at the league’s second-slowest pace, the young Jazz run and gun at the fourth-fastest clip. Offensively, Utah is superior, owning merely the league’s 10th-worst unit, while Brooklyn ranks sixth-to-last. However, the Nets might collapse offensively without Porter; with the 27-year-old on the court, their 116.8 offensive rating would be the league’s ninth-best, but with him off, their 107.0 would be the worst. Porter’s lackluster defense makes up for some of that gap on the other end, but they’re worse overall without him and worse without Powell.

None of the Jazz’s absences are significant: Love has averaged just 14.3 minutes per game and Utah has been 3.7 points per 100 possessions better with him on the bench, and even if Nurkić sits, his positive impact on the Jazz’s defense has been nearly nullified by his detrimental effect on their offense. Filipowski has had a slightly positive impact on both sides of the ball and should be able to fill in capably at center. Thanks in part to having two capable rim deterrents even after losing Kessler, Utah has allowed the fewest attempts at the rim this season, even if it has allowed such shots to go in at the fourth-highest rate. Brooklyn has gotten to the rim at the seventh-lowest rate, though it has finished at a better rate than the Jazz around the basket.

Utah won’t be attacking the rim much either. This season, the Jazz have attempted the fewest shots at the rim and the most from the non-restricted paint, although at least they’ve been the league’s second-most accurate team on floater-range tries. If Utah does get downhill, it should be able to find success — the Nets have conceded far more close-range tries than the Jazz have while also allowing the sixth-highest mark in the restricted area and the 10th-highest mark from floater range — but with Utah’s perimeter-centric style, it’s unlikely. The Jazz’s offense revolves around making lots of passes and finding an open three: they rank ninth in passes per game, third in assists per game, and 18th in uncontested triples. Brooklyn also passes a lot, but rarely registers assists or generates wide-open threes.

Utah has to tighten up its defense from the three-point line, as it has given up the most uncontested triples per game, but the fact that opponents have canned such shots at the ninth-highest rate means it has gotten somewhat unfortunate. The Nets have gotten even more unlucky, though, conceding a league-average number of wide-open threes but allowing by far the highest percentage. Offensively, the Jazz have hit their uncontested shots at the sixth-highest rate, while Brooklyn has converted at the 10th-lowest, indicating that shooting luck normalization should favor the Nets. It’ll have to, given Utah’s advantage on the boards (eighth in TRB%, compared to Brooklyn’s 29th).

All the fundamentals suggest that the Jazz should have a slight edge, even after accounting for their superior shooting luck. However, Utah has been 14.6 points per 100 possessions worse away from the high-altitude confines of Salt Lake City, easily the largest home-road net rating differential in the league, and while some of that could be small sample size-related noise, it also had the worst home-road net rating differential in 2023-24. Combine that with the Nets’ +170 odds, and it’s worth it to consider the upset.

Best bet: Brooklyn Nets Moneyline (+170)