Figuring Out the Future: How to Watch Jazz Games During a Transitional Year

Markkanen’s play points forward to a bright Jazz future. (Vaughn Ridley via utahjazz.com)

The Utah Jazz have turned some heads early on, winning four of their first five with energy and defense. They’ve been a fun surprise. Things could even out rather quickly; they play nine of their next 14 on the road, they have four sets of back-to-backs in that span, and they appear to have suffered both a Covid outbreak and an injury to bouncy guard Collin Sexton. Or maybe they’ll stay frisky in all the right ways. But regardless, it’s a safe bet that the Jazz won’t continue winning 80% of their games.

And that’s very OK.

While this scrappy group has hustled their way into the hearts of Jazz fans, this season was never going to be judged on wins and losses alone. Wherever you personally stand on the question of how aggressively the Jazz should pursue higher draft lottery odds, it’s just going to be a season where long-term questions outweigh the night-to-night results.

There is oh-so-much more stuff that we’ll pull from each encounter than simply the final scoreboard. For this next little while, being a Jazz fan will be as much about gathering information as about actually rooting for games to end a certain way. It’s a little bit like watching a prequel about a beloved movie character. You know Obi-Wan Kenobi will still be standing at the end of the six-episode miniseries, so you don’t have to sweat each close call with a blaster or wonder if he’ll survive an encounter with Vader. It’s more about understanding all the bridges characters will cross on the way to the next phase of the story.

That’s exactly what this next season will be about: everything the Jazz do will be focused on figuring out what will matter to the next competitive version of the squad.

I’m less interested in the interminable argument about whether winning games is good or bad. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see your favorite team win. There’s also nothing wrong with wanting top-end talent to land on your favorite team’s roster. This column isn’t about that debate at all, except to say that eventually the fan experience this season will probably be less outcome-oriented than some are accustomed to. Whether because they trade someone, because regression rears its head, or because this energy level is hard to sustain through 82 games, you might be better off making your viewing experience about different things.

Here are the things that matter to this particular writer while watching this particular version of the Jazz.

Reading each guy’s potential Jazz future

Whether the Jazz win 25 games, 35 games or 45 games, nothing matters more in this transitional experiment than figuring out exactly which guys could still be on this team and making an impact when the Jazz are truly competitive again.

We don’t know exactly when the Jazz will get back to the inner circle of title contention, but it won’t happen overnight. That means some of the current protagonists behind the envigorating start will be footnotes in the larger story of the rebuild. Some guys’ contracts will run out before the Jazz complete their climb; other players will eventually turn into assets the Jazz can use to get meaningful stuff. For a rebuilding team, nothing is off limits unless it’s an asset that has a non-trivial chance at yielding a blue-chip piece. 

When I watch games, I’m constantly trying to answer that question: who is most likely to help the next contending version of the Utah Jazz? As a starting point, these guys are grouped together because things like age, contract status and years of team control influence the likelihood of a particular guy staying even more than ethereal concerns like “do they like him” or “is he good yet.”

Updated: The very back of the roster

15. Udoka Azubuike
14. Leandro Bolmaro

Initially these two, who narrowly avoided training camp cuts, were ranked above the elder statesmen only because their contracts at the time technically gave the Jazz some future control via matching rights if one or both really popped. But two days after I published the original list, club brass made the decision to opt out of both players’ 2023-24 team options, so they are now both on expiring contracts, with unrestricted free agency waiting next July. That moves them even less likely than the vets to be around whenever the Jazz hit the next stage of their reconstruction, since all four guys in our next category could be under contract for at least one more year. These two have also logged fewer minutes on the court than all other regular-roster players. 

Older veterans

13. Rudy Gay
12. Kelly Olynyk
11. Mike Conley
10. Jordan Clarkson

It’s just math with these four: they’re all 30-plus and on a team that is at least a couple of years away from really being in the mix again. None have contracts beyond next season, at which point they’ll all be somewhere between 32 and 37 years old, and potentially looking for a more immediately competitive situation. Even if they want to stick around and see the project through, the Jazz would have to value their impact — on the culture and on the court — over flexibility and the allure of the unknown.

Clarkson is the most likely of this group to stay into the next phase of his career, both because he’s the youngest (30) and because he has reportedly expressed a comfort level in Utah and a desire to mentor this young group. Gay is the least likely, because of his smaller role and a salary that makes him easier to move. The Olynyk-Conley order is a bit more subjective, but Olynyk is younger, cheaper and therefore potentially interesting to more trade suitors. Mountain Mike also has more connection to Utah by now. If the Jazz have a believable path to being good by the end of his current deal, there’s a non-zero chance he stays and lends his wisdom to the next core, too.

Younger veterans with short-term contracts

9. Talen Horton-Tucker
8. Malik Beasley
7. Nickeil Alexander-Walker
6. Jarred Vanderbilt

These four are all between 21 and 25 years old, and yet they’ve all been real rotation players already: Beasley entered the season having played over 7,000 NBA minutes, and the other three had all played right around 3,000.

Having said that, all four are under contract for only one to two seasons (including this year), and unrestricted free agency awaits three of the four whenever their contracts are done. 

Alexander-Walker could become a restricted free agent next summer, and those matching rights increase his odds at outlasting THT and Beasley on the Jazz roster. But I couldn’t put him over Vando, whom one Jazz writer recently described as “foundational.” I might not go that far, but he’s a perfect role player for various phases of the rebuild, so Utah will try to keep him in the program unless they get an offer they can’t turn down. He’ll technically be extension-eligible next summer, but don’t hold your breath: vet extension rules limit what he could make in the first year of an extension to around $13M, and he might be better off to scan the market before taking that. More likely, if the Jazz want to keep him long-term, they’ll need to prepare their pitch for 2024 free agency.

Vando might wind up being more of a building block than some of the names still to come, but until that uncertain contract future is ironed out, this is as high as I could put him.

Rookies with several years of team control

5. Simone Fontecchio
4. Ochai Agbaji
3. Walker Kessler

See, this is exactly why this exercise makes an interesting lens through which to watch the games: because I’ve already altered my rank order on this group of youngsters.

Kessler’s court awareness and defensive impact have already made him look like a solid rotational piece as opposed to a project. That’s fairly rare for non-lottery rookies. He just looks like he gets it already. Small sample sizes can distort someone’s stats, but it’s harder to fake just a pure understanding of what’s going on. Jazz coach Will Hardy has already deployed Kessler in a couple of very different schemes and it didn’t faze him. 

I’m definitely not out on Agbaji, though. It’s way too early to write him off, and eventually he’ll get chances, whether because of injury, trades, rest or just because he develops enough in practice to force Hardy to play him. First round rookie contracts guarantee the Jazz somewhere between six and nine years of team control, so it’s extremely likely that both Kessler and Agbaji are around for a bit.

Fontecchio looked impressive in his first extended court time, but ranks behind the other two for contract reasons. First of all, his current deal lasts half as long as the rookie scale contracts of Kessler and Agbaji. And when he does hit free agency in 2024 (the Jazz will have matching rights if they want them), he can only be signed at that point for up to four years. So while Agbaji and Kessler could have 6-9 years as Jazzmen before they experience free agency, Fontecchio won’t make it past year six with the Jazz unless he signs a minimum of three contracts. That alone was enough to list him last among this trio.

Youngs who will be given a chance to star

2. Collin Sexton
1. Lauri Markkanen

Initially the two extra guaranteed years on Sexton’s deal convinced me to list him as a more likely long-term Jazzman. But Markkanen has absolutely been the surprise of the season for Utah, showcasing a versatility and scorer’s knack that have him leading the Jazz in scoring. It’s suddenly not inconceivable that he could be on a star path in his new mountain home. As for his likelihood of staying while the Jazz climb back up the Western Conference power structure, he will be extension eligible next summer. The stingy veteran extension rules and the fast-exploding salary cap might entire him to wait until free agency, but the Jazz could put a 3-year $70 million offer in front of him next summer (or they could wait until the following summer and offer him 4 years and $97 million). That’s nothing to sneeze at.

As for Sexton, never underestimate the importance of the fact that he actually chose Utah in free agency. He will likely work his way back into the starting lineup at some point, and he could also find the ball in his hands a lot more if a veteran guard is traded at some point. He is literally the only player in post-merger NBA history with zero All-Star selections (as of now) to post a qualifying season with 24+ ppg on .570 or better true shooting. Some are quick to dismiss the 2020-21 performance by Young Bull, but literally every other player to score that much and that efficiently over a season has been an All-Star, whether before or after reaching that feat. He’s under contract for this season and three more.

Both Sexton and Markkanen were sign-and-trade recipients after being squeezed a bit in the low-leverage throes of restricted free agency. The result is that both are paid reasonably, so at some point they become so valuable as trade assets that the Jazz have to consider their options. Otherwise, both will be around for a few years and will be given opportunities to lead this transitioning squad.

To be continued: Development & basketball identity

If you grant my premise that Agbaji, Fontecchio and others have a greater chance of impacting the Jazz’s future than the high-minute vets, then it stands to reason that the Jazz should throw them every minute possible while the veterans keep the bench warm, right?

Not so fast.

I’ll continue this “How I’m Watching Jazz Games” guide next week with an exploration into why I always insist that one of the NBA concepts that fans misunderstand the most is the relationship between development and playing time. In the proper ecosystem, development isn’t the result of minutes — it’s the other way around. More on that in a few days.

I’m also far more interested in searching for clues about the Jazz’s basketball identity than I am in which team has more points in the end of each contest. That’s especially true given that the Jazz have a new coach. It’s infitely more intriguing to me to try to build my understanding of the basketball philosophies that the Hardy-era Jazz will embrace. We’ll explore that in the sequel post as well.