The Triple Team: League executive calls Jazz ‘the picture of tanking’ — but is that fair?

Three thoughts on the week in Jazz basketball from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. “The picture of tanking”

In the fourth quarter of Saturday’s 55-point, record-setting loss to the Charlotte Hornets, Jazz CEO Danny Ainge came to Ryan Smith’s front row seat and had a relatively animated conversation, while Will Hardy stood nearby. I took a picture of the scene from my seats at the top of the lower bowl and posted it on social media. (Thank you, iPhone zoom.)

That photo kicked off a conversation on ESPN’s Hoop Collective podcast, because a league executive saw this photo and texted ESPN reporter Brian Windhorst: “He sent me the photo that Andy posted, and he just wrote the following text: ‘the picture of tanking.’”

Look, it is perhaps unfair that the Jazz have become the NBA’s poster child for tanking. There are plenty of other teams around the league not trying their best to win every night. The Jazz aren’t the worst team in the NBA, nor its most hopeless.

Privately, Jazz execs have expressed frustration that league attention has been on their franchise so heavily. They also take care to note that Lauri Markkanen and Jusuf Nurkic had lengthy EuroBasket campaigns this summer, which they say necessitates some downtime.

But when you make tanking moves as obviously as the Jazz have, it’s hard to regain sympathy. There’s no non-tanking explanation for Svi Mykhailiuk’s minutes, for example. There’s no reason Markkanen and Nurkic’s absences should correlate with the games they face tanking competition. There’s no reason to trade John Collins for Kyle Anderson and Kevin Love, and so on.

It’s a situation of the league’s own doing, though.

As the Hoop Collective hosts pointed out, these are the incentives that the league has created. Billion-dollar organizations are going to do the rational thing in those circumstances, and the rational thing is chasing the ping-pong balls at the top of the draft.

And it says something about how strong those incentives are that so many seem to be on board. Will Hardy could raise a stink and play his best lineups every night — he doesn’t, because he, too, wants to coach AJ Dybantsa. Lauri Markkanen could go to the NBA Players Association and demand a grievance filed — he doesn’t, because he’s imagining the assists from Darryn Peterson and the wins that would come with them.

The real losers here? The fans who pay for games today. There were more than a few boos after the Jazz suffered their worst loss in franchise history, and it’s hard to say they weren’t deserved. I hope, one day, that the league’s incentives, and the Jazz’s actions, point towards their fans being invested for every game rather than tuning in and out as demanded by the injury report.

2. Jazz need better second halves from Taylor Hendricks and Kyle Filipowski

After winning the summer league MVP trophy, Kyle Filipowski hasn’t had a very strong start to the 2025-26 season. He has a negative VORP, averaging nine points, six rebounds, and two assists per game with some below-average shooting numbers.

With Filipowski, the strengths and weaknesses are largely what we thought they would be from the moment he was drafted: We knew he’d be an all-around offensive talent with strength and athleticism weaknesses limiting his interior defensive impact. Those weaknesses have proven as advertised, while perhaps the offensive output has been slightly disappointing in year 2. (If he were to get to his year one numbers, though, you’d feel better about it, and this may well be a sophomore slump.)

Taylor Hendricks, now in his third year, has a VORP of 0.0. He’s actually a rather different player than advertised in the draft: Right now, his main value is making the open three, while he’s showing nearly no help-side defensive value whatsoever.

Troublingly, he looks relatively slow and unathletic at this point — and we don’t know if that’s because of the natural course of recovery from his broken leg, athleticism he’s permanently lost, or a result of the massive bulk he’s put on in the last two years. The Jazz went into this season prepared to largely write off the first half of the season for Hendricks, knowing the sheer severity of what he was coming back from, and they will indeed have to do that.

The Jazz are getting killed with either of these players on the floor. They’re a -8.5 with Filipowski out there, a -13 with Hendricks out there.

Both of these guys simply have to develop more in order to stay in the league. Their status as replacement-level players works for their first few years in the NBA, but eventually, the Jazz and the rest of the NBA will move on to younger replacement-level guys to fill out the end of rosters unless there’s significant improvement. The clock, unfortunately, is ticking.

3. The Lauri Markkanen/Keyonte George two-man game

Despite the above, the Jazz did not actually have a bad week. They only barely lost to Oklahoma City by four in overtime, beat the Mavs, and then finished by beating the Cavaliers on the road to start this five-game road trip.

When they try to win, they look like a mid-tier team in the Western Conference. The conference is weak enough this year that they’d be in legitimate play-in tournament contention if they were trying to go for it — and certainly if Walker Kessler were healthy.

The number one reason this works is the two-man game between Keyonte George and Lauri Markkanen. We know both of those guys have been having terrific individual seasons, but I don’t think it’s been emphasized just how well they play off each other at this point. We’re approaching mind-meld status.

Want proof? Here’s the list of the top two-man assist pairs in the league, from PBPStats.com:

First of all, massive credit to Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic, who make the top three twice with their ability to pass to one another, incredible stuff.

But there’s George and Markkanen right there at number two in the league. George has gotten super adept at finding Markkanen on time and on target.

Impressively, the combination is also working extremely well late in games, where the Jazz have been one of the league’s best clutch teams this season. The Jazz have a 10-7 record in clutch games, and the sixth-best net rating in the NBA.

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