After Ryan Smith bought the Jazz from the Miller family in October 2020, he said he would build on Larry’s and Gail’s legacy. He not only wanted to win championships, he had every intention of putting his team in position to do exactly that.
“We’re all here for one thing,” he told a crowd. “We want a parade in this city. That’s it.”
He also said later, with great earnestness: “We want to win.”
Nobody reading this needs to be told that it hasn’t happened. But just to make sure …
It hasn’t happened.
Not even close. Not even respectable. Not really.
It’s to the point where fans and cheerleaders have to get excited about and take comfort in tight losses, like the home setback the other night against Orlando. The Jazz fell … but, hey, Keyonte George lit it up with 27 points on 8-for-22 shooting, Svi Mykhailiuk went for 23, Kevin Love got 16 and 16. Ace Bailey scored 14. And the Jazz dropped to 10-17 on the season, with folks forced to reach for optimism, guessing how that game could have gone had Lauri Markkanen played, what that record would have been had Walker Kessler not gotten hurt.
C’mon, it’s been five years. What’s it gonna be … seven years? … 10? … 15? … 20? At what juncture does practical patience turn into anger, or even worse, apathy? At least the Millers, while never hoisting Larry O’Brien’s trophy, gave the people consistently competitive teams, teams of which they could be proud. What are the Jazz now?
Look, I like Ryan Smith. He’s a good dude. He’s a smart dude. He’s a rich dude. But so is my brother-in-law, Allen. And no way on God’s green earth would I want him running the Utah Jazz.
Five years into the Smith ownership, the Jazz sport a combined regular-season record of 196-233. And that includes a couple of initial seasons in which Smith had the previous regime’s players and coach before deciding to sign off on blowing that whole thing up for a number of reasons, foremost among them that that version of the Jazz supposedly had neither the talent or the togetherness to win a title, nor did it allow for the financial flexibility necessary to add to what was already in place.
Flexibility, it was rather arrogantly and naively thought, would bring triumphs and trophies. And a lot of, as Smith put it, “fun.”
After the decision was made to trade All-Stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert before the 2022-23 season, the Jazz record has been a lousy 95-180. That’s Smith’s record, too. And it should be kept and noted, the same way a coach’s record is kept and noted, sized up like a prized pig at the county fair.
The Jazz have been in the slop, but earned no blue ribbons.
After the team was severely revamped, it has burped and lurched, and even worse, not had a firm path laid down under the direction of Smith, Danny Ainge, Justin Zanik and Austin Ainge. The Jazz have accumulated strategies that have included a litany of trying real hard with what they have, not trying real hard, going “big-game hunting,” outright tanking, getting fined by the league for not putting players on the floor who could have played and, in general, fiddling-and-fuddling around, cloaked under the disguise of developing young players.
It’s gone on and on. The competitive ineptitude. The losing.
It’s left them now, in December 2025, fighting or not fighting, depending on how you see it, for a spot in a play-in situation for the last slot in the Western Conference’s playoff field. That, then, would, in turn, potentially give them the privilege of getting swept in those playoffs’ first round by the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team that would laugh out loud at the Jazz as it ate them alive like a gator on a goose.
Some say the Jazz have been mistreated by Lady Luck, as last season’s lottery dropped them to the fifth pick, despite the fact that they had the NBA’s worst record. They deserved that top pick because — darn it — they worked hard to earn it. They lost and lost and lost. And fortune straight punched them in the lips for it. Instead of Cooper Flagg, they got Bailey.
And so it went, so it goes.
But look at the Jazz’s other pickups by way of the draft over that span. Taylor Hendricks, George, Brice Sensabaugh, Cody Williams, Isaiah Collier, Kyle Filipowski, Walter Clayton, among others. George has shown flashes, been hot of late, and determinations are pending on some of those other guys, but where’s the authentic gold in that group? Where’s the value in what they’ve lost for what they gained in return? Where’s the slam-dunk progress?
The Mitchell deal got them Markkanen, as well as players no longer with the club, a first-round pick already spent and traded, first-round picks in 2027 and 2029, and two first-round pick swaps for 2026 and 2028. The Gobert deal got them a bunch of players no longer on the roster, along with the draft rights to Kessler and a pick that turned into George, another pick for a player who was traded, a first-round pick swap in 2026, and first-round picks in 2027 and a top-five-protected first-rounder in 2029.
But then, you already knew all that.
You also know that the Jazz are putting in danger possession of their own first-round pick in 2026 — if it doesn’t fall among the top eight selections — to Oklahoma City, of all teams.
The Jazz still have those remaining draft accumulations, although based on what they’ve done with their past drafts, the question emerges as to what those assets are or what they will be worth.
Meanwhile, they slog through abysmal-to-sub-mediocre seasons with results that make the Mitchell-Gobert years seem downright scintillating. Remember when the Jazz finished with the best regular-season record in the league? They were ousted in the playoffs, but at least the regular season wasn’t an inevitable disappointment.
After a fistful of subsequent seasons, the Jazz are stuck in a worse place than they were when Smith bought the team. They’re jammed up in the NBA’s dreaded No-Man’s Land, a spot from where winning a championship is impossible and so, too, is the reasonable hope of quickly collecting the talent necessary to make them title contenders. Not without a hug and a kiss instead of a left hook and a straight jab from Lady Luck, something along the lines of finding and drafting a remarkable-yet-less-discovered player like Nikola Jokic from distance. Maybe they’ll tank and tank again and keep on tanking.
Jazz fans have been mostly tolerant and long-suffering. Everyone around here — somehow, some way — clings to far-distant hope, still. Everybody tries. But for how long? What would Larry Miller think? Not sure, but I am pretty sure he’d slam his fist on a table and do something about it.
The Lady has shown no inclination to wrap her arms around the Jazz in said manner. All of which leaves the Jazz in the most precarious of positions for any shot any time soon at a championship — one requiring them to either rely on their own brilliance, their own acumen, or depend on the all-knowing assistance of a higher power.
Is Ryan Smith that higher power?
Man, oh man.
God help the Utah Jazz.
