For a lot of Utah Jazz fans, every win will be bittersweet this season.
Wins will mean smiling players and opportunities for fans to cheer. But they’ll also mean worse odds at the kind of superstar prospect that the Jazz will need to actually be competitive for an NBA title in the long term.
Given that even the usual feelings about winning and losing are up in the air, how do you even make sense of the Jazz’s 2022-23 season? I propose the following rubric:
Everything is all about finding the three to five guys who will be part of the next good Jazz team — whenever that may be.
NBA turnover is at an all-time high. In order to acquire the stars that will be needed to get to the next level, the Jazz will have to move players and salaries. Frankly, many of their young players are just not going to pan out — such is the risk inherent in all young players. But there is a chance that a small handful of players — those three or four or five guys — from this year’s roster will be around when the Jazz taste the playoffs again.
Who might that be? Here’s the breakdown of what to watch for.
Unproven players
The Jazz have six players on the roster born in 2000 or later. On cheaper, rookie deals, these might be the players most likely to stick around the longest — if they can develop into real contributors.
Newly acquired rookie Ochai Agbaji has the best resume of the group: a lottery pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, and an NCAA Champion and Final Four Most Outstanding Player after his Kansas won the tournament last year. Standing at 6-5, he has NBA-level catch-and-shoot ability, and showed strong defensive aptitude throughout college. But he hasn’t found much playing time through preseason under Jazz coach Will Hardy — he even had a Did Not Play-Coaches Decision in the third preseason game. Is he struggling to make the NBA transition more than expected?
Meanwhile, 2022 No. 27 pick Walker Kessler has made the rotation. He’s a classic rim-protecting, rim-running big man — with maybe the hope of developing somewhat of an outside shot as he becomes more comfortable. There have been rookie mistakes, to be sure, but he’s also shown off an aptitude for film study early in training camp.
Leandro Bolmaro is in his second NBA season, and now on the Jazz after being acquired in the Rudy Gobert deal. He can be a playmaker, and he’s a genuine pest on the defensive end. But he can’t score at the NBA level right now: He’s not a good shooter, and not athletic enough to finish around the rim. His NBA future will depend on whether he can develop that jump shot.
Despite being in his fourth NBA season, Talen Horton-Tucker, acquired in the Patrick Beverley deal, is still just 21 years old. He’s a bowling ball of a 6-4 shooting guard, with long arms, a lot of bulk in the middle, and no neck. But he sometimes uses that physicality unwisely right now, driving into defenders and taking wild shots.
Center Udoka Azubuike is now in his third NBA season, but he’s played in just 32 NBA games so far — a low of anyone in the 2020 NBA Draft. He’s still huge, and he can still jump high, but it’s unlikely he’s been able to develop his game much after missing so much time due to injury.
Rookies Johnny Juzang and Micah Potter are the team’s two-way contracts, and will likely spend most of their season with the G League SLC Stars.
“Young vets”
“Young vets” is a phrase we’ve heard a lot during training camp — the idea is that the Jazz have a lot of players who have been around the league a time or two and have NBA-level skills on which to hang their hat, but still are young enough that they could significantly improve.
Fifth-year player Collin Sexton has the highest scoring profile of anyone on that list. Still just 23, Sexton is a bulldog drive-and-finish player who averaged 24 points per game two seasons ago before facing injuries last year. Finding consistency, playmaking for teammates, and defense at a small size are the greatest challenges he faces.
It’s a similar story for Malik Beasley — he scored 20 points per game two years ago for the Timberwolves before being supplanted in the starting lineup last season. Beasley’s speciality is shooting, though: He’s a career 39% 3-point guy. He’s bigger than Sexton, and as such a better defender, but probably still needs to do more to establish himself on that end of the floor moving forward.
Lauri Markkanen, the Pac-12 product who nearly went to the University of Utah, had a breakout summer at the EuroBasket tournament for his native Finland. Always been known as a stretch big man, Markkanen showed off more play creation and ballhandling skills in the tournament than he had in the past. Can he consolidate those gains at the NBA level?
Jarred Vanderbilt might be the Jazz player with the highest trade value right now. Just 23, “Vando” established himself as an NBA starter with the Wolves last season, thanks to his high-energy defensive play, smart rotations off the ball, and ability to finish around the rim. In a new context, can he continue his trajectory upward in a chaotic system?
Nickeil Alexander-Walker got a big chance with the New Orleans Pelicans in his first three NBA seasons, before falling out of the rotation for the Jazz after being part of the Joe Ingles trade last year. Unfortunately, he had the lowest shooting percentages in the NBA last season among players who played major minutes. He’ll need to more consistently get better shots for himself, and/or make more of the iffy ones he takes, to have a shot.
Also 26 years old, Simone Fontecchio has had a very solid Europejan career before moving to the NBA this summer. If you’re familiar with the league, the hope is that he can become similar to Bogdan Bogdanovic — not the former Jazz’s Bojan Bogdanovic, but the Hawks’ shooting guard. Fontecchio is a little taller than the latter Bogdanovic, but less adept with the ball in his hands. Still, Fontecchio should be able to contribute with his shooting alone.
Ties to the past
After all of the changes of the offseason, only three rotational players for the Jazz last season remain on the roster. They’ve also picked up one other 31-year-old via trade.
Mike Conley, now 35, is the only Jazz player with an All-Star selection to his name, though it came two years ago. He can still shoot and lead an offense well, but perhaps with a little less verve and energy than he used to. More troublingly, he looked very out of his depth in last year’s playoff series against the Mavericks. Will the Jazz get the Conley they saw early in last year’s regular season, one of the top 10 point guards in the league? Or will they get the one they saw late in the year?
A beloved fan favorite, Jordan Clarkson is now 30 years old. You know what he does: he takes the offense into his own hands, taking and making tough but cool shots as well as any microwave scorer in the league. A top-caliber sixth man might make more sense on a contending team than this one, though; it will be interesting if the Jazz can find a team who would give value for Clarkson, who has one year remaining on his contract before a player option in 2023-24.
Rudy Gay is 36, and fell out of Quin Snyder’s favor last season. He’s determined to show that it was a fluke, but he has clearly lost a step in early preseason play. He also has one year remaining, plus a team option; the Jazz may or may not be able to find a taker for him.
Finally, the Jazz picked up Kelly Olynyk in the Bogdanovic deal, and he’ll likely be the Jazz’s starting center. He’s a shooting big man without much rim protection at offer, but the Jazz have been using him as a playmaker this preseason too, reading off-ball cuts and screens and delivering the ball on target. He has two years left on his deal too, but most of the final year is nonguaranteed.
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