What can you expect from the Utah Jazz this year? Get to know the 2025-26 roster.

Utah Jazz fans might be forgiven for tuning out during the end of the 2024-25 season. The team finished just 2-21 in March and April, fighting tanking fines from the NBA and general apathy.

The question is: How different will this season be?

Jazz President of Basketball Operations Austin Ainge has promised that Jazz fans won’t be subject to tanking of the sort fans saw then, when the Jazz intentionally sat their best players to lose games.

Doing so gave the Jazz’s youth experience, the type of which they may be able to build on for this upcoming season. It also put them in position to draft 19-year-old Ace Bailey, who looks like one of the league’s brightest rookies.

And after parting ways with Collin Sexton, John Collins, and Jordan Clarkson in the offseason, the Jazz have turned the roster over to many of the same young players who struggled down the stretch last year.

So what should you watch for in 2025-26? Let’s go position by position:

Point guard

Keyonte George, Isaiah Collier, Walter Clayton, Jr.

There may not be a more important player to the outcome of this season for the Jazz than Keyonte George. Because Isaiah Collier has been dealing with a hamstring injury through preseason, George has been upgraded to the starting point guard position, which means the ball is in his hands more than any other player. In that role, he needs to become more efficient after some stagnancy between year one and year two, shooting 39.1% from the field in both years. He also needs to become more defensively oriented — one-way scoring guards are out of vogue in today’s NBA.

Collier, meanwhile, followed up a bright rookie season with an iffy summer league. He’s already one of the best point guard passers in the NBA, but to stick on the floor, the shooting from the 3-point line will have to improve from 24.9%.

There’s therefore the possibility of Walter Clayton, Jr. becoming the team’s starter at the role sooner than expected. The rookie Clayton is actually older than George and Collier, and it shows — he plays a mature floor-general game built around shooting and defensive toughness.

Shooting guard

Ace Bailey, Svi Mykhailiuk, Elijah Harkless, John Tonje

According to the NBA and the Jazz, Ace Bailey lined up at shooting guard in all three starts in preseason, despite standing at 6-foot-9. I tend to agree with the description of his duties: He played like a shooting guard, coming off of screens and knocking down shots at a higher level than anyone else on the roster. Bailey is the Jazz’s future, and the future looks bright.

Svi Mykhailiuk has been getting significant minutes here, despite entering the summer with a nonguaranteed contract for the season. He provides scoring threat with a decent dose of tunnel vision to go with it.

Elijah Harkless and John Tonje are on two-way contracts, and both will spend significant time with the G League Salt Lake City Stars. Harkless brings best-on-team defensive effort and the ability to draw one moving screen call per quarter; Tonje brings scoring smoothness and the ability to get to the free-throw line. Harkless is 25, Tonje 24.

Small forward

Brice Sensabaugh, Cody Williams, Kyle Anderson

Brice Sensabaugh looks like he’s taken a real leap as a scorer, playmaker, and even a defender. He’s gotten significantly slimmer, which allows him to compete defensively and get out on the fast break more often offensively. Meanwhile, his 3-point shot is the best on the team — non-Lauri Markkanen division — and sets up the rest of his scoring game. A breakout year looks on the way.

Cody Williams, however, has struggled ever since arriving in Utah as the No. 10 overall pick last year. There were short flashes in summer league, but Williams’s production simply hasn’t been NBA standard for most of the year at nearly every aspect of the game in his rookie season and in preseason. So much more development will be necessary for Williams to reach even a future as an NBA role player.

One player who has found that niche: Kyle Anderson, who has been a small-forward NBA role player for 11 seasons now. He’s one of the least athletic but most cerebral players in the league, great at finding his teammates and knowing where to be on the floor. He may have lost a step a bit, though, and found himself mostly out of Miami’s rotation in the playoffs last year.

Power forward

Lauri Markkanen, Taylor Hendricks, Georges Niang, Oscar Tshiebwe

This is the strongest position group on the roster — there are probably seven players who would call themselves power forwards on most NBA teams. It’s also where their best player plays, though, so adjustments are made as a result.

Markkanen remains at the top of every opponent’s scouting report: His ability to snipe from the outside from nearly every spot on the court, while then also getting all the way to the rim for dunks on his drives, makes him the Jazz’s largest threat. The Finnisher nickname works in multiple ways, and it’s easy to understand why trade rumors fly about this guy — he’s really good.

Taylor Hendricks is bouncing back from the broken fibula he suffered in just the third game of the season last year against Dallas, and is already playing a major role for the Jazz as an aggressive 3-and-D wing. He could start at the small forward spot for the Jazz, and has set a goal to become a Defensive Player of the Year award winner at some point in his career. He has work to do to get there, but it’s not a crazy idea, thanks to his length and athleticism.

Georges Niang returns to the Jazz as the player who has more wins than any other NBA player in the 2020s decade: 295, which just beats out Jayson Tatum’s 291 wins and Nikola Jokic’s 288 wins. That probably ends this year. He played a major role for Quin Snyder’s Hawks last year, and still shoots every open three he gets. Makes a great chunk of them, too.

A player with a credible claim for the best rebounder in the world, two-way contract Oscar Tshiebwe led the NBA with 17.2 rebounds per 36 minutes last year — which sounds pretty good, unless you compare it to his absolutely incredible G League average of 21.2 rebounds per 36 minutes. The question marks essentially lie everywhere else, where Tshiebwe’s limited height and finishing ability hurt his overall impact scores. He’s one of the nicest humans in basketball, though.

Center

Walker Kessler, Kyle Filipowski, Jusuf Nurkic, Kevin Love

While his contract wasn’t extended by Monday’s deadline, Walker Kessler remains the linchpin center for the Jazz. Kessler led the league in offensive rebounding percentage and was second in block percentage, behind only Victor Wembanyama. Next for Kessler has to be expansion of his game offensively: either by becoming more of a playmaking pivot, shooting from midrange and out, or finishing more creatively within 10 feet.

Whether Kyle Filipowski is a power forward or a center is an open question, and probably mostly depends on how the Jazz want to space the floor. But Filipowski won the NBA’s summer league MVP trophy on the back of efficient, all-around scoring performances in Las Vegas this July, he figures to be a real offensive threat during his career. His interior defense needs to improve; he was also slowed by a lower back injury in preseason.

Acquired via trade in the Collin Sexton deal, Jusuf Nurkic is looking to reestablish an NBA foothold amidst smaller expectations than those he faced as the starting center in Phoenix next to Devin Booker and Kevin Durant. Nurkic’s prodigious screening ability and ability to play as a playmaking pivot at the top of the key could open up off-ball actions for Bailey and Markkanen, pushing the Jazz to offensive efficiency. The question is now the defense, where Nurkic has always been limited and might have regressed some.

A five-time All-Star who has a solid case to make the Basketball Hall of Fame, Kevin Love is now 37 and nearing the end of his career. In recent years, he’s been splitting his time as a backup 4/5 who takes most of his shots as threes and rebounds well. He’s mostly on this team thanks to his veteran leadership, though, something teammates have raved about in during the Jazz’s training camp.