Suns at Jazz NBA Pick for December 31

We’ve finally made it to the last day of 2020. This has felt like the longest year of all-time for most of us, so I’d imagine we’re all ready to put it in the rearview mirror. Here’s hoping for better days in 2021.

Before the calendar flips to the new year, we’ve got seven NBA games on the schedule for today to help you count down. The games are spread throughout the day with today being an unofficial holiday, which should be music to the ears of sports bettors everywhere.

One particularly appealing matchup goes down out west, where the 3-1 Phoenix Suns will visit the 2-1 Utah Jazz. Utah has picked up a couple of wins over divisional rivals in the Thunder and Trail Blazers on the road, while they have lost their only home game of the young season to Minnesota. Phoenix is fresh off of a 111-86 shellacking of the Pelicans on Tuesday night, and the high expectations this team had coming into the season are looking justified early on.

BetOnline.ag has the Jazz listed as 3.5-point favorites in this one with an over/under of 220.5 points.

Suns Primed to End Playoff Drought

It’s been an awful long time since the Phoenix Suns played a playoff game. The Suns, who have been one of the most successful franchises in NBA history since their inception in 1968, haven’t been seen in the postseason since 2010. That team lost a six-game series to Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, which effectively capped the Steve Nash/Mike D’Antoni/Amar’e Stoudemire era in the desert.

Since then, the franchise has seen an awful lot of losing. The Suns have finished over .500 in just one of the 10 seasons since, but hope is high around this team right now.

The Suns’ 8-0 showing in the bubble earlier this summer combined with the offseason acquisition of Chris Paul has vaulted Phoenix into the playoff race in the Western Conference. The team’s 3-1 start has done little to quell that optimism.

Paul helped lead an underdog Thunder team to a respectable record last season, and he’s looking to do the same again this year now that he’s in Phoenix. The future Hall-of-Famer has posted relatively modest averages of 11.8 points and 9.5 assists per game through his first four outings in a Suns uniform. Phoenix has gotten a fairly balanced performance offensively overall this season. Devin Booker is the team’s leading scorer at just 19 points per game, and he’s one of seven Suns averaging at least 10 points per game thus far. That kind of even point distribution isn’t something we see very often in the modern NBA.

The fact that the Suns have gotten off to a 3-1 start without Booker having really found his footing yet is a great sign for this team’s potential. Booker’s scoring numbers were always likely to decline now that Paul is in the fold, but his efficiency figures to improve with CP3 running the show offensively. Booker has only hit 30.8 percent of his three-point attempts early on, but his teammates have been shooting the lights out. Cameron Johnson, Langston Galloway, Cameron Payne, Mikal Bridges, and Jae Crowder are all shooting at least 36 percent from deep through the first handful of games.

Same Old Jazz

Very little is new about the Jazz this season. Utah paid big money to keep both Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert in the fold this past offseason, while the team decided to bring back Derrick Favors in free agency. Rather than starting at power forward next to Gobert like he used to, Favors is now Gobert’s full-time backup. Bojan Bogdanovic has also returned from the wrist surgery that kept him sidelined in the bubble. Otherwise, this is the exact same team we saw last season.

The Jazz are banking on this team’s core being good enough to lead the team to a title, but the early returns haven’t been good. While Utah has shown the ability to win around 50 games every year as a solid playoff team, the ceiling appears capped on this bunch. The Jazz still haven’t advanced beyond the second round of the playoffs since 2007.

The return of a fully-healthy Mike Conley could make Utah more of a threat come playoff time, though, and he is coming off of one of his best games in years. Conley piled up 20 points, 10 rebounds, and nine assists in 32 minutes of work in the Jazz’ 110-109 win in Oklahoma City earlier this week. The 33-year-old staying healthy could go a long way toward determining how far the Jazz are able to go this season.

What’s the Best Bet?

Teams that win the offseason rarely wind up meeting expectations, but I’m a believer in what the Suns are doing. Phoenix has a nice collection of complementary young pieces in Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, while Deandre Ayton is primed to take a step forward in his third NBA season. If Booker can find his shooting stroke sooner than later, this team is legitimately dangerous. Paul just needs to stay healthy.

Phoenix has the chance to make a statement tonight in Salt Lake City. Going into Utah and winning is a tall order when there are fans in the building, but the lack of home-court advantage should make it a much easier place to play for opponents. The Suns have looked legitimately good to this point, so I think there is still a bit of bias in the oddsmakers’ decision to install them as betting underdogs tonight.

Rather than betting on Phoenix to cover the 3.5 points, I think taking the Suns to win the game outright is a solid bet. You can currently get the Suns at +140 to win the game on the moneyline, which looks like excellent value. Buy the Suns’ stock before the general public comes around on this team.