Awards Season Fun: Fake Jazz Trophies for 2024-25

Kessler was a standout in the 2024-25 Jazz season (Alex Goodlett via utahjazz.com)

The Jazz were unrepresented on the list of the NBA’s award finalists, which makes sense given their record. But even in years when Utah is outside the awards dialogue writ large, analyzing their players through that lens can be a fun way to process who the team’s top performers were.

And since the actual NBA awards are now named for all-time league greats, it seems fitting to have this batch of fake hardware carry the names of prominent Jazz people whose accomplishments mirror the spirit of season awards. It’s a tradition we started right after the league renamed awards two years ago, and it doubles the amount of stuff we can debate — the namesake of each faux Jazz award and the current recipient.

So let’s do it: here are your 2024-25 Jazz top performers.

The Donovan Mitchell Jazz Rookie of the Year Trophy

Right off the bat, our newly named awards are going to ignore history, emblazoning Mitchell’s name on this fake trophy over Darrell Griffith, the only true ROY winner in club history.

Why? Mitchell was the instant centerpiece of a relevant team. He averaged 20.5 ppg as a rookie as he lifted the Jazz into the playoffs, where somehow he got even better: 24.4 scoring. For his part, Golden Griff immediately became the second option on an ascending team, scoring 20.6 as a rookie in an era before the 3-point shot was a major weapon. (He made just 10 threes all year.) But Spida’s ability to shift the Jazz into a whole new competitive window as a rookie is just more special. Plus, he’s somewhere inside the top 10 of Jazz careers, and someone that important just has to memorialized somewhere in this silly exercise.

2024-25 Winner: Kyle Filipowski

He and Isaiah Collier both had their share of the rookie zeitgeist, but in the end Flip was better as an all-around basketball commodity. That’s especially true if you fancy all-in metrics, most of which judge Collier (and fellow Jazz first-rounder Cody Williams) pretty harshly. Whatever. Especially for later picks, the measure of rookie success isn’t about VORP or EPM, but rather about how they demonstrated and then built on their NBA-level attributes. Collier did that with his passing, speed and strength, so no to need to lose much sleep at this point over his Huge Nerd Index numbers, for example.

Flip was also a revelation in his own way, The Jazz really leaned into his court vision and creation ability, especially late in the season when they ran even more offense through him. His 3-point shooting from February forward (37%) was good enough to hint at a very skilled future for the Duke product. 

The Rudy Gobert Defensive Jazz Player of the Year Trophy

Gobert won the DPOY award three times as a Jazzman and Mark Eaton won it twice. Gobert made all-defense six times as a Jazzman, Eaton five times. It’s close, but Gobert is the choice here.

Eaton holds several unbreakable Jazz block records, including more than twice as many swats over his 11-year Jazz career as Gobert sent back in nine Utah seasons. But defense is more than blocking shots, and Gobert’s role in the more modern defensive landscape is more varied and impressive.

In the 1980s, being a defensive big man mostly meant guarding post-ups, so Eaton lived down low. In Gobert’s era, that wasn’t an option. Yes, he was the physical epicenter of that Jazz team’s defensive universe, but in the modern game Gobert had to guard both guys in pick-and-roll, switch, show, etc. Could you imagine Eaton switching out to guard Isiah Thomas or Clyde Drexler in space? Plus, same logic here as with Mitchell above: Gobert needs to be recognized here for his top-five Jazz career.

2024-25 Winner: Walker Kessler

This was supposed to be the season where Taylor Hendricks challenged Kessler by earning more reps against elite wings. Alas, that didn’t happen, and instead Kessler remained the lone defensive bright spot in an otherwise pretty porous defense.

Kessler was one of just 15 defenders to challenge at least 400 rim attempts this season, and of those, only Jarrett Allen and Gobert himself allowed a lower percentage than Kessler’s 54.8% at the rim. General FG defense numbers are a bit more subject to shot luck, but Kessler once again held opponents well below expected outputs (-5.1%) when tracking cameras identified him as the primary defender. No Jazz player who played more than three games (another *sigh* for Hendricks) had a bigger impact on opponent shooting. And then there’s all the eye test stuff, the elite block percentage, the rebounding, etc., and let’s just say this shouldn’t be a controversial pick.

The Lauri Markkanen Most Improved Jazz Player Trophy

The lone Jazz MIP winner is an easy choice for this award name, as his jump to stardom two seasons ago is exactly what the award is about. He and Adrian Dantley are the only Jazz players ever (and two of just six NBA players during the 3-point era) to clear the 25 ppg mark for the first time after a double-digit scoring leap from one season to the next. Stockton was second in MIP voting when he nearly doubled his scoring average and led the league in assists in his first season as a full-time starter, and other guys (like Gobert and Mitchell) steadily improved over their Jazz careers. But there’s no reason to overcomplicate the choice here when Markkanen has the actual thing on his mantel.

2024-25 Winner: Brice Sensabaugh

There are predominantly two types of MIP winners: the Markkanen kind, who make a leap from solid role player to bona fide star, and the other kind who graduate from the fringes to contribute meaningfully.

The Jazz had nobody in the first category this season, but after spending half of last season in the G League, Sensabaugh was a rotation regular whose true shooting soared from 51.1% to 61.2%. He was a double-digit scorer, one of the league’s top 15 outside shooters, and a net positive by metrics like VORP and EPM. This wasn’t just a case of a second-year player getting more minutes; there were tangible things he got much better at.

Fellow second-year pro Keyonte George played a few more minutes per game and saw corresponding increases in his counting stats, but his efficiency and advanced stats were much flatter year-to-year than Sensabaugh’s. Johnny Juzang saw real rotation minutes for the first time and rewarded the Jazz with almost nine points per game, but stats say he was still a net wash in terms of winning impact. And John Collins’ bounceback to mid-Atlanta levels of efficiency and scoring was notable, but ultimately constituted less of an “improvement” than a return to form.

The Karl Malone Most Valuable Jazz Player Trophy

The big one could really only belong to the Mailman in basketball terms, as he’s the only player to win the actual MVP award while a Jazzman. He was a 14-time All-Star and 14-time All-NBA selection, and nine of the 10 best Win Shares seasons in club history belong to him. The only other real candidate here is John Stockton, but his name belongs on another fake trophy (below). At the same time, the NBA drew criticism for putting Malone at the center of 2023 All-Star festivities because of a very fraught past, so I get why people feel a certain way about putting his name on more stuff. Basketball history (and indeed sports in general) are filled with flawed characters, including the guy the actual MVP is named for. I legitimately don’t know how to reckon with all of that. Do some people’s accomplishments get scaled down by 29% because they did bad things, or up by 6% because they helped an old lady to cross the street, or not count at all in some cases? Who’s in charge of deciding each athlete’s character-based stats multiplier? That calculation sounds as exhausting as it is morally problematic.

To date, none of his 36,374 Jazz points or two MVP awards have been vacated, so instead of talking ourselves into putting Andrei Kirilenko’s name on it (he came in 13th in MVP voting once!), it seems like his role in Jazz history still “counts,” and if that’s the case there’s really no basketball argument for anybody else.

2022-23 Winner: Collin Sexton

This writer is still firmly in the camp that Markkanen is Utah’s best and most important player, and I am not even slightly worried about some statistical dips in a year when he and the Jazz were very clearly experimenting with different aspects of his role and shot diet. At the same time, it seems incongruous to give an award aimed at macro value to someone who played just 47 games. Collins, then, gets similarly ruled out for appearing in just 40 contests.

Which leaves us with Young Bull. Of the main rotation guys, only Sexton (+3.4), Markkanen (+5.1) and Collins (+12.0) had a significant positive impact on net rating when they were on as opposed to off the court, and Sexton played 34-58% more games than the other two. His stat production (18.4 points on 48-41-87 shooting splits, plus 4.2 assists) also rivaled theirs. Kessler (+0.2 net rating difference) averaged 11 and 12 and led the team in a bunch of different advanced metrics, but also played 5 fewer games (similar total minutes).

The Deron Williams Clutch Jazz Player Trophy

In the post-statues era, Mehmet Okur leads the Jazz in tying or go-ahead field goals made in the last 2:00 of the fourth or overtime, followed closely by Williams’ 30. But Williams was more of the clutch engine of that team, and as with the Griff-Mitchell debate above, he also edges his Turkish friend in terms of his macro placement in the franchise pecking order.

Stockton, of course, drilled the most clutch shots in franchise history, but we’re still saving him for something else.

2024-25 Winner: Walker Kessler

This isn’t a Jazz season that will be remembered for clutch battles; no Jazz player had more than 81 minutes in clutch scenarios (under 5 to play, score within 5), which is less than half the clutch minutes of league leader Bam Adebayo. And every Jazz player with even 20 such minutes had a net rating in those settings that was double-digit negative.

The Jazz’s leader in clutch buckets was Kessler (16), clutch points was George (43), clutch assists Collier (9), clutch true shooting was Juzang on a tiny sample (79.1%) and then Filipowski (68.9%). Six different guys have made tying or go-ahead shots with the shot clock off in the 4th or OT. In other words, there has been no single designated closer for the Jazz this season.

Kessler shot 72.7% from the field in clutch situations, and defense also matters in close games: he also had three blocks in the final two minutes of games with a 1-possession margin. The spirit of this award might be to reward guys who are offensive generators, but stat site Inpredictable says Kessler’s net contribution to win probability was the greatest on the team. That makes sense since the only players who participated in more clutch games than Kessler’s 19 were Collier (24) and George (23), and both of them really struggled with efficiency. The only other real candidate for me is Sexton, who had 50-50-83 shooting splits in clutch situations across 16 games.

The Jordan Clarkson Jazz Sixth Man Trophy

Clarkson is the only Jazz winner of the real 6MOY trophy, so naming a Jazz bench award after him seems like a no-brainer. He embodies more than anybody the spirit of what 6MOY is usually about: a guy who changes the dynamic of games with his aggressiveness and microwave scoring off the bench. Thurl Bailey did the same for the ’80s Jazz, but Clarkson has since surpassed many of his marks for bench scoring proficiency. Plus, reaching past an actual 6MOY winner to take Big T or someone like Joe Ingles would just feel like an overcomplication.

2022-23 Winner: Keyonte George

Tbis comes down to how literal we want to be with the real criteria for this fake award. Real-life 6MOY candidates are supposed to have come off the bench more often than they started. George did not (35 starts, 32 off the pine), but he was the Jazz’s spiritual sixth man for a huge chunk of the season. He averaged 17-4-5 as a reserve, better counting stats than even actual winner Payton Pritchard (14-4-3, albeit in 77 games as a reserve and with a phenomenal net rating).

If we rule out Utah’s actual sixth man on a technicality, then by extension that disqualifies Clarkon himself (just 37 total games). That leaves us with Filipowski, Sensabaugh and maybe Juzang, all of whom played 20 to 21 minutes per game. Flip’s overall stats are impressive, but he did his most solid work as a fill-in starter (14-9-3 in those games). His stats when actually manning the bench role (6.9 points and 4.6 rebounds) don’t really scream “6MOY.” Sensabaugh, on the other hand, came off the pine in 56 of his 71 games played, and his stats in that role (9.6 points on 62.7% true shooting) are a little closer to traditional 6MOY territory than Flip’s. He led the team in bench minutes (1000) and bench threes (107). Keyonte just edged him out for bench points, 553-536.

In the context of a team that used 46 different opening lineups, I think it’s OK to ignore the fact that George started three games too many. His performance while in that role was quintessential sixth man stuff, and him transitioning to that mindset of bench sniper was actually a pretty massive storyline of the season.

The John Stockton Postseason Jazz MVP Trophy

Stockton also makes sense for the Clutch Award or MIP, and those would keep his name in the conversation every year as opposed to just when the Jazz make the playoffs. But I like the idea of tying his legacy to the postseason, since he is the franchise leader in playoff wins above replacement and the author of some of the biggest Jazz postseason moments ever. 

Malone was a playoff beast, too, averaging 27-10-4 and scoring nearly a point and a half per shot through the Finals years. But we gave Malone the other one, and Stockton needs to be represented on a trophy that really matters.

2024-25 Winner: Not this year

Hopefully we’ll hand this one out before too long.

The Adrian Dantley Comeback Jazz Player of Year Trophy

If the goal of doing this is to celebrate past greats, Dantley is too good to NOT be memorialized somewhere. He was a top-5 Jazzman, and he also won this (now-defunct) award in 1983-84, when he came back from an injury to appear in 79 games and claim the NBA scoring title. Since everything we’re doing here is fake anyway, we might as well take the license of faux-reactivating this award so we have an excuse to highlight AD.

2024-25 Winner: John Collins

In literal terms, Collins didn’t really come back from anything. He actually missed more games in 2024-25 than in the previous season. So this is instead a bounceback, but that’s OK. Take ’85-86 winner Marques Johnson: he played in 72 games the year before, but had career lows in points, rebounds and shooting. Then he won the award by getting back to his career norms. That is kind of what happened with Collins: look at how his ’24-25 production compares to his 4-year peak in Atlanta:

• 18.5 points, 8.7 boards, 1.6 assists and .635 true shooting over 4-year span from 2nd season through 5th.
• 19.0 points, 8.2 boards, 2.0 assists and .628 true shooting this past year.

In other words, Collins found a way to channel that previous version of himself that was dormant in his final Atlanta season and his first go-around with the Jazz.

The Jerry Sloan Jazz Coach of the Year Trophy

Sloan finished in the top four of COY voting nine times, including three second-place finishes, but he never won the award. Frank Layden did, but Sloan is the best Jazz coach by such a wide margin that it makes sense to break with history here. Sloan was named one of the 15 greatest coaches in league history as part of the 75-year celebration, after racking up 1,223 regular season and playoff wins for Utah. But don’t worry, we’ll bless something else with Layden’s name.

2024-25 Winner: OK, so this doesn’t really work as an annual thing since there’s exactly one head coach…

…but Will Hardy has a ton of believers already. We’ll learn more about the former Eph as a high-level basketball tactician when the Jazz are deep in the crucible of more competitive basketball. But in terms of approach and disposition, Hardy brings to his job a depth of understanding and a ton of emotional intelligence toward his players. Your scribe has been in the interview room with Hardy some 50-60 times over three seasons, and each conversation has been as insightful in human terms as anything else. He’s already the 14th most tenured head coach, thanks to some recent firings.

The Frank Layden Jazz Executive of the Year trophy

This franchise patriarch was an actual EOY winner *and* COY winner after the 1983-84 season, the year the Jazz finally broke through with a 45-37 record, a division title, and a playoff victory against Denver. He was a very good drafter, such as when he brought two Hall of Famers to Utah in consecutive drafts using spots 13 and 16, but even beyond that, he very creatively fielded teams in a period of time when the Jazz were on financial life support. He also picked a great assistant coach in Sloan, and was humble enough to know the right moment to step away from the bench.

2024-25 Winner: Ditto…

Justin Zanik and Danny Ainge are co-architects of the current project, although the former does most of the smiling-and-dialing. They lead some 30ish execs, scouts, strategists and other professionals in the front office, so maybe the right approach here isn’t to put the trophy in any one person’s office, but rather to recognize the best bit of collective transacting from the season. At the deadline, for example, this group traded three low-value 1sts, two superfluous vets and a little bit of cash in exchange for a high-upside 1st, five new 2nds, a 670% return on the cash spent, and KJ Martin. Not bad.

Hopefully in years to come, the Jazz will be successful enough to have their personnel in the mix for league-wide recognition. Regardless, it’s still fun to give flowers, even/especially after a season where the streamers came down far less frequently than Utah fans are accustomed to.