Unlike what happened in 2023-24, where Utah was a respectable team during the first half of the season before embarking on an epic tank job the rest of the year, the Jazz were a terrible team since the start of the last season. Their prized rookies Cody Williams and Isaiah Collier did not have the immediate impact the team needed from them, the same thing that had happened with their previous year’s rookies Taylor Hendricks and Keyonte George. In a team that bet it all on drafting some good players, it doesn’t seem like Utah has hit the jackpot with any of these recent draft selections.
Utah’s best player Lauri Markkanen, maybe due to not having the proper talent around him, had one of his worst offensive seasons in the league while only playing 47 games. On the other hand, after being the worst defensive team in the league two seasons ago, the Jazz made a small improvement in order to be the second worst defensive team last season. We are clearly dealing with a team currently on a big run of defensive ineptitude.
During this offseason, Utah decided to be quite active in the market. They drafted Ace Bailey who is already having some impact during the preseason and unlike their other recent draft picks, Utah might have finally drafted someone with the potential to be a franchise key player for the future. They also traded up to draft #18 Walter Clayton Jr., who led Florida to the National Championship last spring.
With so many young players in their backcourt, the Jazz needed to clear some space and decided to let both Jordan Clarkson and Collin Sexton leave the team. Their backcourt will now be filled with young and inexperienced players such as Collier, George and Clayton. Usually when this happens, things don’t tend to go well as these are key positions who are responsible to organize the whole offense and some experience is required.
In order to add some experience to the team, Utah also signed some veteran players in the offseason such as Kyle Anderson, Georges Niang and Jusuf Nurkic.
It seems clear that the team’s frontcourt will be their best unit with Lauri Markkanen, Walker Kessler and Kyle Filipowski, who is coming from a great summer league in which he was named the MVP after averaging 29.3 points and 7.7 rebounds while shooting 56.1% FG and 39.1% 3pts.
Utah seems to be a much better team than they were last season. The veterans are more trustworthy and their rookies could have an immediate impact. However, for their future, they really need some of the young players that they drafted between 2022 and 2024 to develop in order to at least become respectable role players or else the franchise will be stuck in mediocrity for the near future.