Get ready for a Northwest Division battle as the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder square off at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday at Vivint Smart Home Arena. The two teams appear to be on different arcs with Utah spending heavily in free agency and Oklahoma City choosing to sell off assets to begin a rebuild. However, it's Oklahoma City that has covered the spread in five of the last six meetings between these two teams. The Jazz enter Wednesday night's showdown favored by nine-points in the latest Jazz vs. Thunder odds, while the over-under is set at 221.5. Before you make any Jazz vs. Thunder picks and predictions, you'll want to see what the SportsLine Projection Model has to say.
The SportsLine Projection Model simulates every NBA game 10,000 times, and anyone who followed it last season saw massive returns. In fact, the model finished 300-252 on all its top-rated NBA picks. On top-rated against the spread and money line picks alone, the model returned a whopping $4,280.
Now, it has simulated Jazz vs. Thunder 10,000 times and the results are in. We can tell you that the model is leaning under, and it's also generated a point-spread pick that is hitting in almost 60 percent of simulations. You can only see the pick at SportsLine.
The model knows Chris Paul is the new face of the Oklahoma City franchise after Russell Westbrook and Paul George left for the Rockets and Clippers, respectively. Paul will be eager to prove that he can lift his new teammates up as a pass-first point guard. Paul has led the league in assists per game four times already and he's averaging 9.7 assists per game for his career. If he can get help from Steven Adams on the interior and Danilo Gallinari on the wing, the Thunder could get their season off to a great start on Wednesday night.
A pair of stats from last season to evaluate before locking in your Jazz vs. Thunder picks: The Thunder were the best in steals per game, finishing the 2018 season with 9.34 on average. Less enviably, the Jazz had difficulties with turnovers as their opponents averaged 8.5 steals per game, which was the fourth most in the league. In other words, Utah will need to work extra hard to take care of the ball. In addition, the Thunder have won five of their last six meetings against the Jazz.
But just because Oklahoma City has dominated this series of late doesn't mean it will cover the Jazz vs. Thunder spread on Wednesday.
That's because Utah is a team loaded with star power. The Jazz will welcome back Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, who combined to average 39.7 points, 17.0 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game a season ago. Utah also added Bojan Bogdanovic and Mike Conley to the mix this offseason. Bogdanovic averaged 18.0 points per game last season in Indianapolis while shooting 42.5 percent from beyond the arc. Conley, meanwhile, averaged 21.1 points and 6.4 assists last season in Memphis.
With Mitchell a proven scorer off the wing and Gobert established as an interior presence on both sides of the ball, Utah has a dynamic core that should help the Jazz compete in the highly competitive Western Conference. Joe Ingles should also provide Utah with an outside shooting boost after hitting 40.8 percent of his 3-point attempts over the last five seasons.
So who wins Thunder vs. Jazz? And which side of the spread hits nearly 60 percent of the time? Visit SportsLine now to see which side of the Thunder vs. Jazz spread to jump on Wednesday, all from the advanced model that is up more than $4,200 on its NBA picks last season, and find out.
