At the NBA season’s midway point, here’s who should win team awards for the Utah Jazz

It’s certainly been an up-and-down half season of Jazz basketball.

The good: the Jazz certainly have shown flashes. The standout stretch was the remarkable back to back wins against two of the best teams in the NBA, the Detroit Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs, just after Christmas. And as Keyonte George pointed out recently, “We won 17 games all last year. We’ve got 14 right now.”

The bad: the worst loss in Utah Jazz history, a 55-point loss to the Charlotte Hornets last week certainly stands out. Overall, the Jazz have lost 15 games by 15 points or more — they’re being blown out quite regularly. And once again, they sport the very worst defense in the NBA, for the third straight season.

“Both of the extremes are important, though. The positive ones give us hope: ‘Wow, we are capable of playing really good basketball, and some of these guys, they are getting better,’” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “It’s just the consistency of that that needs to improve, and the negative extreme keeps us humble that we haven’t done anything yet and we have a long way to go.”

With that in mind, let’s hand out some awards for the Jazz’s first half of the season.

MVP: Lauri Markkanen

I don’t think there’s been enough talk about how strong Lauri Markkanen’s season has been.

He currently stands 10th in the league in scoring with 27.9 points per game — just ahead of Steph Curry at No. 11 and Kevin Durant at No. 12. We knew Markkanen could score the ball, but he’s taking on a far larger share of the Jazz’s offense than he ever has, and keeping his efficiency just as high.

The most impressive aspect of Markkanen’s profile, though, is just how much better the Jazz have been when he’s on the floor. With Markkanen out there, the Jazz are 14-19 — they’re 0-9 without him. It means that he has the second-best plus-minus differential in the entire NBA, just behind Giannis Antetokounmpo but ahead of Nikola Jokic.

What about all the games he’s missed? Well, he’s played in 33 games in all. Of the top 20 players in the league by EPM, 12 of them have played 33 games or fewer. All of the league’s stars are sitting out a lot right now — Markkanen just happens to rest the games against the easiest opponents. Think his averages might be bumped a little if he got to play against those lottery teams?

Overall, he’s 16th in the league in Estimated Wins. He deserves an All-Star spot, in my view. I don’t think he’s going to get one.

MIP: Keyonte George

With that out of the way, let’s get to the best story of the Jazz’s season: Keyonte George’s development.

I have never ever, in my life following the Jazz, seen a turnaround as steep as George’s. Midway through his second season in 2024-25, Hardy benched George because he was just playing such poor, selfish basketball. His attitude irritated teammates, his play infuriated coaches, his lack of defense stood out even on the woeful Jazz, and he looked like a classic 5-star high school prospect that bought the hype before flaming out. It was bad.

And then: he was shocked to life. His exit interview with Hardy and the team’s front office was as blunt as it could be, telling George he’d be out of the league if he continued this way. He spent the summer buckled down working on aspects of his game he had previously ignored. And perhaps most importantly, his attitude became team first, not Keyonte first.

The output has been remarkable: he’s now definitely an above-average NBA starting point guard at the young age of 22, putting him on a trajectory in which he could make All-Star appearances if things continue to improve.

Rookie of the Half-Year: Ace Bailey

It’s not been a brilliant rookie campaign for Ace Bailey — the only top-10 draftee you can definitively say he’s outplaying is Khaman Maluach. It’s a strong class, and he’s gotten somewhat lost in that shuffle.

But so many of the fears about him as a prospect have evaporated in his first half season. Would former manager Omar Cooper drive him and the Jazz apart? No worry, as Bailey fired him before the season began. Would he look to shoot his preferred contested shots, grinding the Jazz’s offense to a boring halt? Nope, Bailey’s been a team-first player.

Now, the NBA has revealed some real holes in his game that he’ll have to work to fill. But at his size and length, there are so many outcomes for him becoming a quality player in the league, and so much time for him to do so, that the Jazz are pencilling him in as a key part of their future already.

I asked Ace to wrap up his first half of the season, and there was one theme: “A lot of learning. I mean, just learning a lot. I mean, as I go, I’m still learning a lot,” Bailey said.

Defensive Player of the Half-Year: Jusuf Nurkic

Seriously.

I thought about giving Walker Kessler this honor, just to be funny and trite. He’s played in five games, and there’s a real argument that he’s contributed more defensively than anyone who’s played 40.

But statistically, the answer here is Nurkic — the Jazz are a whopping 10 points better defensively when he’s out there on the floor. This is nearly entirely due to the fact that the Jazz are a very good defensive rebounding team when he plays and a very poor one when he sits. Generally, I prefer to think of rebounding as a third phase of basketball, but if you lump defensive rebounding in with defense, Nurkic is the best available.

This is pretty remarkable, given that the Suns spent a first-round pick to trade him away in large part because of his negative defensive contributions. But it is true nonetheless. This is a very bad defensive team.

Coach of the Half-Year: Will Hardy

Again, I thought about being flip here and giving the award to Chris Jones, the player development coach who has most directly worked with Keyonte George. Jones deserves a lot of credit here for George’s development, especially when it comes to reading the game — the pair spend so much time together on film.

The right answer is Hardy, though. Hardy is incredibly highly respected throughout the league for his offensive contributions to the Jazz; he gets as much credit for Markkanen’s All-Star play as Markkanen does. Opposing teams hate preparing for the Jazz’s off-ball offensive system, because it’s very different than what they’re used to seeing on a night-to-night basis. Hardy deserves a lot of credit for that ingenuity.

There’s also the fact that he’s kept this team relatively bought in despite all of the tanking, which reflects real leadership skills.

Sixth Man of the Half-Year: Brice Sensabaugh

The Jazz’s bench is their weakness. Statistically, they get blitzed when they don’t have at least three regular starters out there.

The most consistent of those contributors, though, has been third-year forward Brice Sensabaugh, who has saved his best basketball for mid-January, when he scored 95 points in a 3-game stretch. For the season, he’s averaging 11.7 points per game despite the fact that his 3-point shot isn’t falling (33% this season) at the rate it was last season (42%).

There’s much more work to do for Sensabaugh to solidify his place in the league, though. He needs to find a balance between scoring and passing, and the defense is still as abysmal as it gets. Despite the points totals, Sensabaugh won’t receive recognition from the league’s GMs until he shows the impact on the Jazz’s margin of victory, not just the point total.