After a brief two-game taste yesterday, the NBA is officially back in full swing. All but two of the remaining 26 teams will take the court tonight for the start of the 2025-26 regular season.
The LA Clippers, who are embroiled in controversy over an allegedly fraudulent endorsement deal handed out to superstar Kawhi Leonard, will have a soft landing to the campaign with a road game against the Utah Jazz, who project to be the worst team in basketball this season. Walker Kessler and Ivica Zubac will tip it off at 9:10 p.m. ET.
The Clippers are 9.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-410 on the Moneyline), with the point total set for 225.5. The Jazz, meanwhile, are +320 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down both teams’ season opener and offer a prediction.
LA Clippers at Utah Jazz preview, prediction
LA came tantalizingly close to having a shot at the eventual champion Oklahoma City Thunder, falling in a tight seven-game series to the Denver Nuggets in the first round. The Clippers re-upped by adding Brook Lopez, Chris Paul, and Bradley Beal in free agency and also made a deal with Utah, sending Norman Powell to the Miami Heat and bringing in John Collins from the Jazz. It’s unclear how much the league’s investigation into Leonard’s contract will impact the team, but in the absence of any retribution, LA projects to be a fringe championship contender, with the 11th-shortest odds at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Utah, meanwhile, is fully embracing the tank. The Jazz shipped off veterans Collins, Collin Sexton and Jordan Clarkson during the offseason and will roll out a rotation chock-full of promising youngsters, including recent first round picks in Ace Bailey, Walker Kessler, Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, Cody Williams, and Isaiah Collier. They still have the Lauri Markkanen issue to deal with — the Finn is too talented for them to be the worst team in NBA history — but they should still finish as the worst team in the Western Conference. That’s no slight on their young players; Bailey looked particularly strong in preseason, and Kessler is one of the best rim protectors outside San Antonio. The West is just deep.
Clippers at Jazz pick, best bet
For once, the Clippers will open the season with a clean injury report. It’s likely that they’ll be fairly liberal with utilizing load management on their flurry of old players this season — Leonard, James Harden, Paul, Beal, Nicolas Batum, Bogdan Bogdanović, Lopez, and Kris Dunn are all on the wrong side of 30 — but unless a late report breaks, all of those players are set to suit up today. Having Leonard fully fit is especially key: last season, he played in 37 games, averaging 21.5 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 1.6 steals per game while draining 41.1% of his three-point attempts, and LA was on a 58-win pace in those contests. He, Zubac, and Collins would have all finished in the top 10 in on-off plus-minus if he and Collins had played enough minutes to qualify.
The Clippers didn’t exactly have the ideal defensive lineup last season but finished with the league’s third-best defensive rating, and now they’ve upgraded from Powell, will have a healthy Leonard, and upgraded their backup center to Lopez, who finished as the runner-up to Jaren Jackson Jr. in the 2022-23 Defensive Player of the Year race. Opponents shot 8.7 percentage points worse within six feet of the basket when guarded by Zubac last season, the second-best mark among 31 players to play at least 65 games and guard at least five such shots per game, and Lopez ranked ninth in the same category. LA also turned the ball over a lot and recorded a lot of steals, and it should be better in the former category now that it has Paul, who has never averaged more than three turnovers per game despite having heavy ball-handling duties throughout his entire career.
Utah will foist a lot of responsibility on Bailey, who averaged 17.6 points and 7.2 rebounds per game while hitting 34.6% of his triples in his lone season at Rutgers. He scored 25 and 20 points in his first two preseason games, so he looks solid, but preseason is preseason. The Jazz won’t put a lot of emphasis on the score line tonight, simply on how Bailey meshes with Kessler. With Collier out with a hamstring strain, they’ll also try to evaluate George, who had the sixth-worst effective field goal percentage in basketball last season and lost his starting spot to the rookie. It’s been a long time since NBA fans have gotten to see Markkanen, as he played just six games after the All-Star break last season, but the seven-footer can still score efficiently when healthy and play near-average defense on the rare occasion that he’s engaged. Utah played at the league’s sixth-fastest pace last season and only had the seventh-worst offensive rating, and its offseason moves were more offense-oriented. It could put up 110 points tonight.
The centers could be key: despite having an All-Defense player manning the middle in Zubac, LA actually allowed the league’s third-highest field goal percentage in the restricted area, one spot worse than the Jazz, while locking up everywhere else. That advantages the visitors, though; while they are comparable on defense, Zubac is a much more polished offensive player than Kessler. Utah also allowed the highest percentage from the non-restricted paint and the third-highest from the midrange, as well as the most made threes, and the Clippers have solid shooters, finishing with the ninth-best true shooting percentage last season. I’m high on LA this season, and I think it’ll start with a comfortable win.
