There’s a pro basketball game in New Orleans on Wednesday night.  New Orleans is nominally known as the ‘birthplace of jazz’ and while that is something of an oversimplification they definitely played a big part.  While Joe Six Pack may only know Louis Armstrong for his grinning caricature in cartoons or the song ‘What A Wonderful World’ on the ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ soundtrack and elsewhere, ‘Satchmo’ was a musical colossus that essentially trod the path for the jazz genre.  Basically, the entire concept of solo improvisation in jazz–which is the lifeblood of the genre–started with Armstrong.  The fact that he was born in New Orleans gives the city a pretty good claim to being the rightful home of jazz.  In fact, the airport in New Orleans is named after Armstrong.

Ironically, the team from Salt Lake City will be wearing uniforms that say ‘Jazz’ on them here while the hometown team are now the Hornets.  Utah isn’t exactly known for a deep jazz tradition and to the best of my knowledge New Orleans doesn’t have a huge population of stinging insects but there we are.

UTAH JAZZ VS. NEW ORLEANS HORNETS:

Full disclosure–I grew up in Salt Lake City and have been following the Utah Jazz since the team moved from New Orleans.  I remember the time *before* the Stockton/Malone era when dinosaurs like Rich Kelley and Adrian Dantley roamed the Salt Palace hardwood.  Having said that, I have no idea what is currently going on with this team.  I thought they’d struggle in the loaded Western Conference with Carlos Boozer looking for a ticket to Miami and a legendary reputation for poor play on the road.

But for whatever reason since the first of the year the Utah Jazz win all the time.  They’ve torn it up despite injuries at various times to either–or both–Boozer and Deron Williams.  Since losing the first two games of 2010 the Jazz are 15-3 SU and 13-2-3 ATS since.  They’re now 30-18 ATS overall, 19-12 ATS as a favorite and actually have a winning pointspread mark on the road at 12-9.  In fact, since the Jazz’s torrid 2010 run started they haven’t lost a pointspread decision away from Salt Lake City going 6-0-1 ATS with trips to some tough venues like Denver, Dallas, San Antonio and Portland.  They resumed play after the All Star break by winning and covering against Houston on the road.

The Hornets will be without Chris Paul for awhile and since CP3 went out the Hornets are 2-2 SU and ATS.  They’ve been a hard team to figure out all year even with Paul in the lineup, capable of inspired performances but also capable of losing to Miami by 33 points (and only scoring 66 points) like they did in their final game before the All Star break.  Jazz have revenge from an early January loss in Salt Lake City before they started winning every game they played.  Nothing really profound here, but until the Jazz start to show signs of slipping I’d rather be playing *on* them than playing *against* them.  Jazz are 6-2 SU and ATS in the last 8 meetings including a 2-1 SU/ATS run in the Big Easy.

PLAY UTAH JAZZ -3 OVER NEW ORLEANS