Why the Utah Jazz are no threat whatsoever to the Los Angeles Lakers

3. The Los Angeles Lakers are the deeper basketball team

Depth is really important in the NBA Playoffs. While the rotations typically shrink to eight or nine players, you have to field eight or nine solid, consistent players in order to make a run at the NBA Finals. The Lakers have that while the Jazz have some questions to be answered.

The best role player in Utah is Jordan Clarkson, who reminds me a lot of Lou Williams. He is going to put up numbers in the regular season and be a really good scoring threat off the bench. In the playoffs, he almost can become unusable because of his defense.

Look at Lou Williams’ postseason career. Outside of the 2018-2019 playoffs, Williams’ scoring has gone down in the playoffs. The same thing will happen to Clarkson.

Royce O’Neal starts in Utah but he is not a scoring threat in any regard. Joe Ingles and Derrick Favors are the only other Jazz players that are currently playing 15 or more minutes per game.

The Lakers have 11 players that are playing 15 or more minutes per game and all 11 would be part of the Jazz rotation. Montrezl Harrell, Kyle Kuzma, Wesley Matthews, Alex Caruso and Talen Horton-Tucker is a far better bench group than Clarkson, Ingles and Favors.

There is a reason why the Lakers went 3-0 against the Jazz last season with an average winning margin of 14 points.