SALT LAKE CITY — Will the upcoming NBA season be considered a failure for the Utah Jazz if they don't at least reach the Western Conference Finals?
The Ringer's Dan Devine seems to think so.
In a piece published Thursday, Devine divided the league's 30 teams into seven tiers based upon expectations, and he put the Jazz in a tier he titled "Conference Finals or Bust" along with the Philadelphia 76ers, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers.
"Well, then maybe this is the year that the Jazz can finally get past the small-ball nemeses that have blocked their path, driven by a juiced-up offense invigorated by the arrivals of Mike Conley and Bojan Bogdanovic," Devine wrote. "Before the L.A. teams loaded up, it looked like Utah had the goods to make a run at the Finals; given good health and good luck, it still might."
The Jazz's tier was Devine's second-highest, as he put the Milwaukee Bucks, LA Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers in a tier he called "The Favorites."
Other links
- Will the BYU men's basketball team make the NCAA Tournament in 2020?
- Former Utah Utes kicker Matt Gay, now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, profiled
- Would the Snow College football program be a good one for 'Last Chance U?'
And finally ...
It's not uncommon these days to see the official Twitter accounts of various brands interact with people regarding matters that have little or nothing to do with the brands themselves. Sometimes the interactions go well, and other times they just don't.
On Thursday, the official account of Heinz Ketchup went after a Jazz fan who tweeted displeasure at Heinz for named products mayochup (mayonnaise and ketchup), mayocue (mayonnaise and barbecue sauce) and kranch (ketchup and ranch dressing), and "for acting like they came up with Fry Sauce."
That caught Heinz' ire, apparently, as it responded, "The same way Utah acts like it came up with Jazz."
That opened up a can of worms, and Heinz ended up responding to various comments with roughly 20 tweets about the Jazz mixed in with conversations on other topics in which a rather impressive array of knowledge regarding the franchise was displayed.