San Antonio Spurs, last season's NBA runners-up, welcome a short-handed Utah Jazz to Frost Bank Center in the early hours of Tuesday, five days after needing overtime to see off the same opponents.

Victor Wembanyama's early-season scoring surge collides with a Jazz rotation that has been forced to rebuild itself on the fly since Jaren Jackson Jr. tore his right MCL against Memphis on 26 October.

San Antonio won that first meeting 117-111 in overtime at the Delta Center on 28 October, and the Spurs have since added two more wins to stretch their record to 4-2. Utah have lost four straight since, and come into this rematch 1-5 and bottom of the Western Conference pack heading into a season already complicated by injuries up front.

How do Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs compare on current form?

Utah have not won since beating New Orleans on 23 October, a run that has swallowed four straight defeats including a heavy 112-90 loss at Portland on Saturday. The Jazz have been without Jaren Jackson Jr. for all but one of those games, the two-time All-Star ruled out for six to eight weeks with a torn right MCL suffered in the same first half that saw Lauri Markkanen limp off with a wrist injury.

Markkanen's own issue turned out to be far less serious. He was only a game-time doubt for the first meeting with San Antonio and has started every game since, leaving head coach Will Hardy's bigger problem at centre, where Jaxson Hayes and Mo Bamba have had to soak up minutes that would ordinarily belong to Jackson.

San Antonio's own start has been anything but smooth, with back-to-back losses to Oklahoma City and Houston in the season's first week, yet Mitch Johnson's side have won four of their last five since righting the ship against Dallas. That run has lifted the Spurs to sixth in the Western Conference, a reminder of how differently these two teams' seasons have begun and of how quickly the picture can still change once more of the regular season, and the play-in and play-off structure it feeds into, has actually played out.

San Antonio reached last season's NBA Finals before falling to the New York Knicks, and the roster that got them there is largely intact under Johnson, who inherited the job from Gregg Popovich in 2025.

The tale of the tape leaves little doubt about where the gap between these two teams currently sits. San Antonio hold the edge in every category above, from offensive rating to turnovers, and their defence has conceded almost nine fewer points per game than Utah's.

Much of that gap traces back to Victor Wembanyama, who is putting up 28.0 points and 10.7 rebounds a night in his fourth season and has not needed a slow start to find his rhythm. He dropped 43 points on Minnesota in San Antonio's last outing, a number that becomes more relevant below once Jackson's absence is factored in.

San Antonio's bigger ongoing subplot sits in the backcourt, where De'Aaron Fox remains the nominal starter alongside Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle despite growing noise that Harper has already overtaken him in the pecking order. Johnson has not needed to resolve that tension while winning, and Utah's depleted roster is unlikely to force the issue on Tuesday.

Both sides are back in action within 48 hours of this fixture, a reminder of how tightly packed the NBA schedule gets in the season's opening weeks, and the pair will meet for a third time this season at Frost Bank Center as early as 15 November.

Team news and rotations for Utah Jazz vs San Antonio Spurs

Jackson's six-to-eight week absence is the headline alongside Jusuf Nurkic's own four-week foot injury, leaving Hardy to lean on Hayes and Bamba up front while rookie Darryn Peterson and Keyonte George continue to carry the scoring load in the backcourt.

Markkanen's wrist is no longer a concern after five straight starts since the original scare, and Utah's confirmed five of George, Peterson, Ace Bailey, Markkanen and Hayes should take the floor unchanged from their last outing at Portland.

San Antonio's own absences are confined to the back of the rotation, with Tobias Harris sidelined by a calf issue and rookie Jayden Quaintance still working his way back from an injury that has kept him out since before the season began.

Neither absence touches San Antonio's first-choice five, with Fox, Castle, Harper, Devin Vassell and Wembanyama all confirmed to start for a Spurs side otherwise at full strength.

Utah Jazz vs San Antonio Spurs the matchups that could decide it

San Antonio's frontcourt advantage is the clearest route to victory on paper, with Wembanyama facing a Utah pairing that has combined for barely half his own rebounding output this season.

George offers Utah's best individual counter, and his 21.7 points a game would stand out on either roster, but he will need far more support than the Jazz have managed across their four-game losing run.

Player props to watch in Utah Jazz vs San Antonio Spurs

What has happened so far between Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs this season

The sides needed extra time to settle their first meeting of the season, with San Antonio eventually pulling clear in overtime to improve to 3-2 at the time.

Utah were already missing Jackson for that first meeting too, so Tuesday's rematch finds the Jazz leaning on the same stretched frontcourt rotation that could not get the job done in overtime five days ago.

A third meeting between the two sides is already on the calendar for 15 November back in San Antonio, giving both coaching staffs an early look at how this current form holds up before the month is out.

Utah Jazz vs San Antonio Spurs tips and prediction

San Antonio's frontcourt advantage, home record and recent form all point the same way, and Utah's injury list makes it hard to see the Jazz finding enough resistance to repeat the closeness of last week's overtime thriller.

A heavier San Antonio win feels the likeliest outcome on Tuesday, with Wembanyama again doing the bulk of the damage against a Jazz team still working out how to cover for its missing starters.