So How is the Rebuild Going Anyways?

I was working with a friend of mine a few weeks back and he’s a huge NBA and Chicago Bulls fan. He asked me, “Clark, how do you feel about the Jazz this year.”  And that was a surprisingly hard question to answer. On one hand, they are almost unbearable to watch. On the other, they are finally picking a lane and committing to shooting for a top draft pick. Is this a good season for the Jazz?

“I’m happy they are embracing tanking this season, but there’s not a ton to look forward to other than that,” was my response.

“But at least you have Danny Ainge making decisions,” was my friend’s answer.

I shrugged. He was surprised at the lack of enthusiasm.

I understand his optimism on my behalf. I think most online Jazz fans collective response to the Jazz rebuild the last 3 years has been: In Danny we trust. He’s built two championship teams already; he will do it here too. But is that trust deserved?

Day 1 of the rebuild- July 1st, 2022

It’s been 2 and a half years since the Jazz hit the proverbial reset button and traded Rudy Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves. At the time the trade was almost universally lauded, with some NBA analysts calling it one of the most lopsided trades of all time.

Almost 950 days later that trade looks not exactly like a haul, but has netted the Jazz Walker Kessler and Keyonte George and will still yield three more first round picks and a swap that the Jazz won’t be ready to use. But this post isn’t about relitigating the trades that got every Jazz fan excited. They were good trades that put the Jazz in an excellent position moving forward.

But what grade would you give the rebuild since September 1st of 2022 when the Jazz sent Donovan Mitchell to Cleveland? From my standpoint, it would be a very very bad grade and here is the singular reason why:

I’ll give you one guess how many Jazz players land on any of these lists. That is a huge black mark on the Jazz rebuild so far. The Jazz have made 6 draft picks the last two seasons and not only are none of them on these top 25 lists above, but only Walker Kessler is close to cracking it. As an aside, it would be an absolute crime for the Jazz to trade Kessler for future draft picks at this point, as he is our only healthy young player with probable starting upside.

On top of the above list, here is how Bobby Marks, Kevin Pelton and Tim Bontemps over at ESPN saw the Jazz’s immediate future right before the season started:

I have been critical of the arbitrary nature of these future power rankings in the past, so I am not going to change my tune just because it fits my narrative. But notice how just in one year the Jazz moved from 15 to 24th in future power rankings, which at least indicates the general feeling of these smart basketball guys. Also I think that most Jazz fans would figure the Jazz have the best or 2nd best draft capital situation in the league, but they are 4th here behind the Thunder, Nets, and Spurs. Their overall player talent is bottom 5 (accurate), they have the 8th cleanest books moving forward, and they are one of the least desirable teams for free agents (also accurate). But maybe the most damning number, and the rank that might make the most Jazz fans mad, is that management is below average at 17th. 

Young Players Bring Hope

Lets have an honest discussion about the non-Kessler young Jazz players and see if any of them are pushing the envelope on best young players in the league:

Is Taylor Hendricks the most promising young player? (Isaac Hale via sltrib.com)

Taylor Hendricks was a good draft pick and was really showing some improvement before his unfortunate injury. Excited for him to return to the team. Does he have a higher ceiling than a quality starter who is the 3rd option on a good team? Best comparison might be Hawks’ Jalen Johnson

Keyonte George seems like a great kid, but he’s on a fasttrack to mimicking Trey Burke’s career and there are no signs of stopping. It’s a coin flip whether he is in the league in 5 years.

Brice Sensabaugh has probably had the second best season of any of these guys behind Walker Kessler. He’s still relatively young and has been an efficient scorer off the bench. Most likely outcome is probably being  a serviceable third guard off the bench.

Cody Williams and Isaiah Collier. (Rick Egan, The Salt Lake Tribune)

Cody Williams is physically unready to be an NBA player as of today, but he has a lot of upside. All of these guys need some time to develop, but Williams probably needs the most seasoning. Hard to say what his career will be.

Isaiah Collier is the most fun young player of this group. Nobody plays harder and with more pizzazz. His court vision also appears to be elite. But he shoots 21% from 3 and that will be a hard thing to overcome if that’s a general baseline for his career.

Kyle Filipowski has shown flashes and had a really good stretch of games to start, but the barometer of his career is probably his ability to hit threes (30% on 2 attempts per game right now) and whether he can guard on the perimeter, because he simply isn’t a defensive presence at the rim. At this point, becoming a rotation player would be a huge win for Flip and the Jazz.

Of course all of this discussion and criticism becomes completely irrelevant if the Jazz can land Cooper Flagg this summer. He would change the makeup and trajectory of the team overnight. On the other hand, the Jazz could go through all this losing this season and miss out on Flagg and draft the next Michael Porter Jr. (Ace Bailey) or Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (Edgecombe) and be really no closer to where they want to be after a lost season. I think Rylan Stiles, the host of Locked on Thunder put it best when he said.

“The Jazz are at the mercy of the lottery balls right now” 

-Rylan Stiles

Being at the mercy of the lottery balls feels a little bit like banking your retirement on scratch off tickets, but it’s called the NBA lottery for a reason. Historically the Jazz haven’t really had much lottery luck at all. Their luckiest outcome lead to Enes Kanter and I think we can all agree that it did nothing for the franchise.

What if the Jazz Don’t Get a Real Difference Maker This Draft

As of right now the Jazz have a 72.6% chance of not having the chance to draft Cooper Flagg or Dylan Harper. That probably means the Jazz may tank for another year in 25-26 in anticipation of AJ Dybantsa or the Boozer twins. How long can this rebuild really go before Ryan Smith gets antsy, or Jazz fans stop showing up to games? The Jazz have never tanked two seasons in a row. Lauri Markkanen is almost assuredly dealt this summer if the Jazz aren’t goint to try again and that essentially marks the end of this current rebuild and the beginning of another rebuild.

Dennis Lindsey was hired as the Jazz General Manager right before the 2012-13 NBA season and stepped into a similar situation, in terms of a rebuild, as Danny Ainge did. The Jazz had a lame duck head coach in Tyrone Corbin and a decent team with two beloved team leaders in Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson. Lindsey did the hard thing and let those guys walk in order to maximize draft chances (although he should’ve certainly traded both Jefferson and Millsap).  By his third season over the Jazz, Lindsey was still leaning on the development of young players like Hayward, Favors, Kanter, Burks, and Trey Burke, while bringing along two rookies in Dante Exum and Rudy Gobert. 

Millsap and Jefferson were that generation’s Olynyk and Conley. Jesse Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

In the fourth year the Jazz missed the playoffs by a couple of games and in his 5th season, the Jazz were into the 2nd round of the playoffs with an exciting win over the LA Clippers in the first round. It’s a little bit unfair to compare Ainge and Zanik to Dennis Lindsey, but you also have to remember that Lindsey didn’t draft half of his young players. As of today, this current Jazz rebuild is behind those Gobert/Favors/Hayward teams.

So how long of a leash does this current front office get? Will they even be around to use the 2031 first rounder they just got from Phoenix? All I know is that the Jazz better start getting a couple young stars that can land on some top 25 lists somewhere, or else this rebuild is going to crumble before it even gets started.