Jazz vs. Mavericks Odds & Betting Predictions - October 29, 2024

Williams played 25 minutes on Friday against Golden State, with multiple factors leading to extended burn. I'm expecting him to be under 20 minutes tonight unless things get weird again. Utah was down 14 at halftime against the Warriors, then gave up a 13-3 run to open the 2nd half. Head coach Will Hardy yanked all of the starters at that point, going with the bench unit for the final 9 minutes of the 3rd quarter. Most of the starters played sparingly in the 4th quarter with the game out of hand. Williams ended up being out there for 14+ minutes in the 2nd half, way more than he would see in a normal situation. Dallas ranked 6th in defensive rating after the trade deadline last season. They're just outside the top 10 so far this season and should be a difficult matchup. RotoGrinders has Williams projected for 19 minutes. As long as we don't get more rage substitutions from Hardy, that seems like a fair projection. He was at 19 minutes in Utah's first game, a tight 2-point loss to Memphis.

Luka has been excellent from deep to start this season making four and five 3s in his two games on preposterous volume. He has taken 11 and 13 3PAs. This matchup against Utah is ideal. They are playing at the fifth-fastest Pace in the league and they were the 10th-fastest last season so this is not just a small sample bias. Notably, they have played Walker Kessler more this season. As a result, they need to run drop coverage a bit more which has opened up the 3 point line. Utah's opponents are shooting an insane 48.2% of their shots from 3 point range and making them at a 38.9% clip. Again, this is consistent with Utah's numbers last season where they had the worst 3P% allowed in the NBA. I'll back Luka to exceed 3.5 3s as he continues his hot start to the season.