We’re back. We thought we’d let the season stew for a few minutes before jumping in. And 20-odd games seem like enough stewing. Let’s look at where the sad Utah Jazz are.
How Goes the Plan?
Any assessment of the exhausting rebuild and its non-stationary (to date) goals must consider the context and team-defined principal targets under which this season is being played:
- The Jazz will play to win every time they step on the court (so says Austin Ainge, Jazz GM)
- The Jazz will develop and assess their young talent toward becoming competitive in the future (so says everybody)
- The Jazz will lose enough to keep their top eight protected traded 2026 draft pick from going to the Thunder (so says nobody out loud but team leadership knows it must happen)
These primary goals have, and will continue through the season, to maneuver around each other like the basketball equivalent of the astro-physical three-body-problem. And, like the three bodies of the gravity-physics conundrum, no one can predict the path of what the Jazz are doing. It’s not projectable. It’s chaos… unsolvable. A tweak here or a push there and any or all the Jazz’ intentions could leave their orbits and disappear into the NBA ether.
A quick look at the current standings (see table below) shows the first wobble in the Jazz’ plans. Utah is currently tied with the Dallas Mavericks for the eighth worst record in the league with 8 wins to 15 loses… that’s not bad enough. The Jazz next draft pick must be top eight, or it will be lost to the Thunder. That means Utah must finish in the bottom four this season to ensure that they keep their pick (any higher and they may be jumped by other teams into the 9th or lower slots).
The Jazz winning too many games is only part of their problem in their push to keep their draft pick. A snapshot of the leagues current ten-worst teams reveals a number of clubs that are unexpectedly in the tank game this season—a change the Jazz’ three-body initial condition.
We knew about the Wizards, and the Nets… they were tankers from the get-go. But it is clear now that new teams have entered the bottom-feeder picture. The Indiana Pacers, for example, look very serious about taking this season off and getting what they can in the lottery while they wait for Haliburton to come back from the achilles. The Sacramento Kings also look like they’ve thrown in the towel after an early injury to Sabonis. And the Hornets… well, they may just be perpetual losers despite any good intentions.
Fortunately for the Jazz there are a few teams currently below them that should eventually start to win. The Clippers, for example, do not own their 2026 draft pick. One would think they will eventually make a push for a play-in or play-off spot with nothing to gain from a full tank. The Pelicans also do not own their own pick in 2026 and should want to rally if they can keep Zion Williams on the court for more than a couple games in a row.
The sports books feel the same way and are generally sticking with their preseason predictions of the Jazz finishing the season with a bottom four record (see FanDuel win-total predictions in table above) guaranteeing no worse than the 8th pick of the draft. And the Jazz need to be in that bottom four as they desire not just to keep their 2026 pick but to end up with a shot at one of the top three prospects which include BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, Duke’s Cameron Boozer, or Kansas’ Darry Peterson (a fourth worse position keeps their pick and gives them about a 34% at a top three pick).
The loss Walker Kessler for the season with a shoulder injury is, of course, tragic for the rising center but increases the Jazz’ chances of finishing in the bottom four as the bookies predict. Utah is now a hot, steaming cow pie defensively with Jusuf Nurkic on the court instead of Kessler, and it gets fantastically worse when Nurkic exits and you’re left with K-Love or Filipowski guarding (or not) the rim.
Notwithstanding the impact of Kessler’s loss and the youthful ineptitude of the team (think down 23 to 1 against the Knicks), we sense that the Jazz may still be too good if they continue to play Markkanen, the massively improved Keyonte George, and the defenseless but offensively functional Nurkic. If the Jazz find themselves in the fifth through eighth worst record position in the second half of the season, we predict that you will start to see less of those three players on the court. Despite Austin Ainge’s tenet that the Jazz will play to win, we bet the team will find ways to reduce the talent on the court as the season closes if that is what it takes to keep their pick in the bottom four—it’s that important to them.
Can Any of These Guys Play?
While jockeying to take another swing at a future star in the 2026 draft, the Jazz continue to search for real players amid the picks they’ve already made.
The Jazz are now in their third season of obtaining and assessing assets acquired from the 2022 end-of-season tear down. Only two of the player assets obtained from the Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert trades remain on the team—Walker Kessler and Laurie Markkanen. Utah has also made eight first-round (or near first round) draft picks that either were produced from or were affected by the Mitchell and Gobert trades. All those picks remain on the team. That’s 10 players total, most of the Jazz’ current roster.
But can any of these assets play?
The answer is yes… maybe… a little.
Yes, Markkanen and Kessler can play. Markkanen seems to have returned to top 30-player form after a team-induced (at least partially) sluggish 2024 season. Kessler, before the shoulder, was looking improved and every bit like a top 100 player. And he should be good as new after recovery from the labrum surgery.
Both Markkanen and Kessler could be, and we predict will be, part of a future upward trajectory for the Jazz. We note that there are trade rumors surrounding these two. But the Jazz asking price is sky high (as it should be) and would require proven significant young talent in return, not just draft assets… they have plenty of those. We don’t see any team making an attractive enough offer to cause to Jazz to pull the trigger on either of these guys. The Jazz keep these two pieces and attempt to grow with them, at least in the short to mid-term.
Two players from the crop of executed draft picks, Keyonte George and Ace Bailey, also look to have what it takes to have positive impact on an NBA team. George has transformed himself from the petulant, inefficient second-string point guard into a much more positive, efficient, and resilient force. There’s been a handful of games this year where George has looked like the best player on the team.
The numbers on George confirm the eye test. Most notable are his improvements in field goal percentage (see table to the right) and scoring efficiency. He’s nearly doubled his free throw attempts. He looks much better as an on-ball defender. And yet, there are still games where we once again question if the kid will ever be a consistent enough scorer and facilitator to start on a competitive team. For now, however, he’s showing enough to make him valuable to a near-future transition from tank to run.
Number five pick Ace Bailey is 19 years old and only 23 games into his rookie year. And yet one can sense it. He is long and fast and bouncy. His jumper (three-point our midrange) is naturally quick and gorgeous. He’s a shot maker but also, surprisingly, a natural and willing passer. His game, however, is currently not as refined as his rookie colleagues Flagg, Edgecombe, Knueppel. He struggles with defensive positioning and technique. His drive game is hot mess with him often looking like he’s on skates going to the basket (maybe some new Nikes would help). But his performance to date still indicates a high-ceiling, maybe all-star level ceiling, that the Jazz were hoping for. He’s a piece…maybe a big piece.
The rest of the lot are all stamped with question marks and red ink. They ebb and flow like the tides.
Sensabaugh can shoot but not always. Collier is fast but maybe little else. There’s as many NBA things Filipowski can’t do as he can do. And we know basically nothing yet of how Taylor Hendricks will end up as he works to comeback from the leg injury.
The current riser is Walter Clayton Jr. The 18th pick in this year’s draft has shown poise, range, and accuracy in the last several weeks. Clayton’s calm and usually sturdy approach to point-guarding the offense when he has been called on may be a reflection of his relatively advanced age and experience for a rookie. If he’s truly settling in to the sharp-shooting floor captain he was in college, he may be somebody. But it’s just as likely he’ll waffle.
Alas, only time will tell on them all.
Except maybe Cody Williams.
It might be time enough to call it on Cody. Sadly, Williams looks like a complete whiff with the 2024 tenth pick. We’re still early in his second NBA season, but Williams continues to look as if he can do nothing well. He appears to have no NBA-level skill. He’s not a shooter. He possesses less than average handles. He is long but neither fast nor quick. Williams ranks near the bottom in most offensive statistical categories and has the lowest Efficiency Score (PER) of any player in the league with a zero… he’s goose-egging the ESPN PER table. Australian, Korean, Israeli leagues here we come. Bad pick Jazz, you could’ve had Buzelis.
With few of the Jazz’ recent draft picks “popping”, as they say, one might think the the problem is with the team’s assessment of talent. That’s not an unreasonable conclusion off the cuff. However, although the team has missed with some high picks, the Jazz have actually done quite well in the back end of the draft (see table). A quick summing of offensive and defensive statistics (we used NBA.com’s fantasy point equation–see the table to the right) indicates that five of the eight Jazz draft picks from the rebuild are out-performing their draft position. That said, Jazz brass are keenly aware of their high-pick mis-fires–they swapped out their scouting staff in the off season (reported by Andy Larsen of the Salt Lake Tribune).
All Jazz fans, cross your fingers that the Jazz keep this next draft pick and that their new team doesn’t screw the pick up. They need this next swing and the need it to hit.
The Jazz’ Pulse gets a rating of “faint”
The Jazz rebuild remains unimpressive and precarious. Yes, the team is developing and observing and blah, blah, blah. But they are going to need some luck to move this thing from a depressing, continuing slog to a real race.
If the team were able to secure a top three pick in the 2026 draft, they may well move off of the designed-losing approach next season and begin to add talent via trade and free agency–as we’ve noted, they have some pieces to add to. If they lose the pick to the Thunder, however, they may continue to shed existing assets for younger ones and resign themselves to another losing season. They have their own pick in 2027 after all.
Let us all hope for the former of the above two possibilities. The fan base, the coaching staff, the players, and the ball boys and girls may not be able to take another year of terribleness.