Asset-rich Jazz might be sellers anyway — and that’s OK

Fontecchio netted the Jazz a strong 2nd and a recent #36 pick. (Rick Bowmer via sltrib.com)

Sooner or later, the Utah Jazz would love to become buyers on the NBA’s trade market. They’ve made no secret of their desire to wield an almost unparalleled asset trove to add more top-end talent to their burgeoning group when the opportunity presents itself. 

But it’s a gambit that by definition requires a star-level player to be, you know, available. All the recent buzz points in quite the opposite direction, as the primary function of the NBA rumor mill in recent days has been to throw water on speculation about difference-makers potentially changing cities.

Things could change, but for now it seems market conditions may have turned the Jazz into sellers. In fact, the first leaked NBA trade of deadline week was Utah transferring starter Simone Fontecchio to the Detroit Pistons for draft compensation. That deal will be made official on Thursday, when Kevin Knox becomes trade eligible.

Absent a big swing, there are a few reasons why it makes sense for Utah to shift its focus to asset-producing trades.

Reason 1: It’s what there is

Things could change as the final hours tick towards Thursday’s 1 p.m. MST deadline, but the latest intel suggests there just aren’t top-30 players available this cycle. 

Interest in even borderline All-Stars is being met with “please move along” messages, according to report. Mikal Bridges has never been an All-Star, but was an all-defense selection in Phoenix and has averaged 20-plus points in both Brooklyn seasons. After some initial speculation around his status, reports indicate he was never really available and that the Nets continue to “shut down” inquiries. Elsewhere, it’s suggested the Jazz reached out about Bridges but found the asking price to be “impossibly high.”

For a while, Dejounte Murray was considered the best player actually available, and a credible report had the Jazz even submitting a real offer. Since then, though, Adrian Wojnarowski has said on his podcast that the Hawks don’t yet have an offer that meets their threshold. It’s looking increasingly possible that they’ll simply hang onto Murray through the trade deadline, like they did with erstwhile Hawk John Collins last February, only to deal him months later (for a more meager return). 

Then on trade deadline eve, Yahoo! Sports passed along a rumor of negotiations between Toronto and Utah centered on Bruce Brown. That has since come into doubt when a plugged-in local reporter said (in a now-deleted tweet) that he’d been told the Jazz were not in pursuit of Brown.

So where does that leave things as the deadline is now just hours away?

Atlanta could eventually relent on Murray’s price, but the vibe I’ve gotten is that Utah’s interest there is cost-dependent. He’s a good playmaker, a plus guard defender, and an OK shooter, but even he isn’t a “The Rebuild is Over!!”-level acquisition. Our Zarin Ficklin likely got it right in his analysis that Murray alone doesn’t lift the Jazz to contender status, so you’d have to keep at least some powder dry to add to a Murray-Lauri Markkanen core at some future point. If at some point the price softens, though, he would make the Jazz better if he can return to Spurs-era defensive intensity.

Beyond that, nobody who’s openly available would alter Utah’s reality.

Zach LaVine and Kyle Kuzma are borderline offensive stars who score with middling efficiency and only play one side of the floor. DeMar DeRozan has a more accomplished résumé, but is 34. Miles Bridges is averaging 20 on a train wreck of a team, but even if you thought he would raise Utah’s ceiling, there are serious non-basketball reasons to not want to go there. D’Angelo Russell doesn’t alter the franchise’s trajectory. Tyus Jones will cost too much, both in assets and in salary when he’s re-signed this offseason. There’s just not a lot that would instantly convert the Jazz into a threat to do more than make a higher seed sweat in a first-round series.

Again, the Jazz’s preference at some point is to get aggressive. They own 13 picks in the next seven drafts and their cap sheet has a number of reasonable, stackable contracts attached to good players. Few teams are positioned as well as the Jazz in the event a star player becomes available.

It just doesn’t sound like that’s now.

Reason 2: Utah’s rotation depth gives them a safe hedge if they “sell”

You could argue the Jazz have (or had, before the Fontecchio deal) 12 or 13 rotation-caliber pieces under contract, not even counting some young projects they’d love to evaluate over the final 30 games. They have more playable guys than minutes.

We already labeled basically half of Utah’s roster as pretty dang available in Monday’s Salt City Seven column. That’s why.

Their rotation-level depth puts them in a unique situation: they could ostensible trade whoever you think is their, say, 5th best player, and not feel a huge quality drop-off when their 8th best slides up into that role and the 11th or 12th man (or a developmental rookie) gets promoted into the back of the rotation. Not every team can say that.

Markkanen is clearly the top player in terms of relative importance, but whoever you think is #2 in that ranking could just as easily be someone else’s #5 under a different set of subjective criteria, and vice versa.

For example, take Kelly Olynyk, widely believed to be gettable this cycle. He’s become really important to how the Jazz play and played a major role in some of their biggest victories, like his 8-point, 5-assist fourth quarter against the Bucks where he guarded Giannis Antetokounmpo during a 40-13 Jazz surge.

But he’s currently the 8th man by minutes. If he took a 2-month vacation to the moon and you split his 20 nightly minutes between some combination of Omer Yurtseven, Taylor Hendricks or Luka Samanic, how much are you affecting Utah’s win total over the final 30 games? The Jazz would likely be less good, but what’s the delta over a 30-game span? Two fewer wins? Three? One? At some point is an asset (+ a look at Hendricks’ progress) worth whatever that dip amounts to numerically? Now repeat that exercise for just about any non-Finn on the roster.

That’s a long way of saying they could offload a contributor or two and not have it impact their macro quality that much. And if that’s the case, and there are no massive “buyer” trades available, then the smart thing to do might be to lean into the opportunity to turn their abundance of rotation-quality depth into more assets, with little deterioration to the product in the short term.

Reason 3: Selling =/= tanking; they can still convey the OKC pick

The Jazz don’t want to tank. They have a top-10 protected pick they’d probably prefer to convey to OKC this summer, both to ensure it goes before it could mess up a valuable 3-way swap in 2026 and just to not have that hanging over their heads anymore. In a different draft, maybe the possibility of getting up into the top 5 would be enticing enough that you’d be starting to brainstorm injury excuses for shutting starters down. But given the alleged weakness of the 2024 draft and the spectre of that OKC debt lingering around the building, my bet is that they would prefer to make the play-in even if that means sending the Thunder a late lotto selection.

Staying outside the bottom 10 should be doable even if a couple of rotation players move.

After Wednesday’s games, Utah’s 3.5 games ahead of 9th-worst Atlanta, 5 ahead of 8th-worst Toronto, and a mile away from the other seven. Those are decent-sized chasms to cross with 30 games left. If they keep even one of GSW/Chicago/Houston on their backs, they should be fine to convey the pick.

Reason 3: A seller move could create opportunities to evaluate some guys

Hendricks looked pretty tantalizing defensively during a brief rotation appearance in December, but he has played just seven garbage minutes since 2024 started. At some point the Jazz are going to want to see if some his work in the G League can be applied to an NBA setting. Same goes for fellow rookie Brice Sensabagh.

It’s not just them, either. A couple of rotation-altering trades could also just give Will Hardy an opportunity to experiment with different combinations and iterations. Walker Kessler should probably be playing more. Ochai Agbaji almost exclusively plays opposite Markkanen in the rotation, which could be contributing to his sophomore slump. It could be fun and informative to disrupt the norm and see some other configurations over the final 30. 

More on the Fontecchio trade

The pick Utah got from Detroit (the better of Memphis’ and Washington’s 2024 seconds, currently #32) might be the single best second-round asset to move this week. Early seconds can potentially be more valuable than late firsts, especially now that a new salary cap exception exists to enable teams to sign them to 3- or 4-year deals and have their full Bird rights heading into their second contracts.

Fontecchio was more than just useful; Hardy had raved about his effort and attention to game plans. But he’s heading into free agency this summer, and re-signing him was probably just going to cost more than the Jazz want to pay for a non-needle-mover at this point in the project. (For the same reason, I wondered why hapless Detroit placed the winning bid, but that’s for someone else’s blog post.)

I had heard speculation that Fontecchio would draw multiple seconds based on the amount of interest. The Jazz got one very valuable 2nd, plus you could argue that the draft rights to recent No. 36 pick Gabriele Procida is another second-round “thing.” (For now I’m not subscribing to the “reclamation project” talk around Knox, a career 39-34-72 shooter and a negative-BPM player in each of his six seasons.)

Other thoughts in the final hours before the deadline

• As I was finishing this, Wojnarowski went on ESPN and doubled down on the Olynyk-to-Warriors idea. Big bro points out that GSW would almost have to send two of Kevon Looney, Gary Payton II and Moses Moody for a trade to work financially. The Warriors also have ’29 and ’30 seconds of their own, plus Atlanta’s ’26 and ’28 seconds (and a fake 2nd from Charlotte). It’s not clear if the Jazz would get seconds in a deal where they’re also getting Moody.
• Philadelphia is the other team that keeps getting linked to Olynyk. Woj reminded viewers that the Sixers are looking “for size, for shooting, for playmaking,” three things Olynyk offers. They have a variety of seconds, and they would ostensibly send 2-3 of them along with expiring salary.
• Jordan Clarkson is still getting mentioned in connection with teams that need some bench scoring, but there is a chance he’ll have more more of a market in the offseason when his cap number falls from $23M to $14M. Tony Jones has described him as “still a trade candidate,” but less likely to move than Olynyk. It’s hard to tell how high he is in the Knicks’ wish list, but that’s the rumor that keeps coming up, with the expiring Evan Fournier and potentially Quentin Grimes involved in the deal.
• The Knicks could also see if Olynyk could help them cover over the absence of Julius Randle.
• The Jazz are still pretty committed to seeing if Keyonte George can have a future as a full-time lead guard, so I don’t think they’re as interested in a band-aid PG as conventional wisdom would have suggested fairly recently. Kris Dunn has also stabilized the Jazz’s starting lineup and Collin Sexton is playing out of his mind. All of that removes the motivation to meet the asking price for the very in-demand Tyus Jones. Minnesota got Monte Morris for a 2nd and two fringe rotation guys, and Delon Wright could still be on the market. I just don’t sense a lot of urgency from the Jazz to go after that tier of PG.