Previewing the 2023-24 Season Using Gambling Odds

How much will Markkanen score? 6MOY for Sexton? Mark Russell Pereira tackles a gambling-themed preview of the 2023-24 Jazz. (Trent Nelson, The Salt Lake Tribune)

I’m feeling awfully confident after my prescient prognostication last year of a wildly new-look Utah Jazz team that most experts couldn’t really nail down. I picked the Jazz to comfortably go over their estimate of 23.5 wins and sniff the playoffs, while remarking that such a performance would require Will Hardy be a legitimate first-time head coach, Lauri Markkanen (or Collin Sexton) becoming an All-Star, and Walker Kessler (or Ochai Agbaji) providing immediate impact. I said Kessler at +400 was a sneaky bet to win the rookie rebounding title, but noting that eventual winner Jalen Duren (+500) was the one to watch out for (and not Paolo Banchero or Jabari Smith).

The only player prop I could find for Markkanen was a combination of 18+ PPG and 9+ RPG, and I remarked that the rebounds would be way, way harder than the points (he ended up with 25.6 PPG and 8.6 RPG). And yes, I did say it would be a “very stupid bet” and that I would be “saving my money” instead of betting on Markkanen to win Most Improved Player at a wild +7000, but, BUT!!!, I also wrote that “[a]n overall skill leap from Markkanen is possible and if he ends up scoring more than 24 PPG [as the] focal point of the offense for a Jazz team finding itself around 38 to 40 wins, he’s going to attract a lot of voting attention.”

In the first two games of the season, Markkanen was extremely good in a blowout over the eventual champion Denver Nuggets, and was the key force powering the Jazz to win in overtime against the Minnesota Timberwolves (punctuated by a nasty poster dunk over Rudy Gobert, of all damn people). Markkanen’s MIP odds remained unchanged, and I took a bite of that action (h/t Laird Doman who gave me the nudge). It will pay off all of my losing bets from the year before.

Enough history. You’re only as good as the last wager placed. So let’s once again use the sports books’ odds as a way of previewing the 2023-24 Jazz.

Onto the bets! ¹

Utah Jazz Regular Season Wins: 35.5 (7th worst)

Let’s get my big-picture thoughts out of the way. Last season, I was one of the few optimists about the Jazz. I understood the pessimism with all of the unknown quantities like a new coach, new no.1 option, no identity, etc. But the talent on the floor was experienced and better than a line of 23.5 wins (which roughly translates to “dump shit garbage” in gambling parlance).

This season, I am on the completely opposite end of the general sentiment; I am firmly under 35.5 wins for this team. And, again, I understand the opposite optimism: the new coach is smart and influences players to play hard in adversity, the new no. 1 option is a damn All-Star, and there are real offensive and defensive identities to bank on night after night.

But the cracks in the foundation that could be delightfully ignored last year are way too obvious to hide this year en route to a possible playoff appearance. The passing skill is horrible, which is compounded by the fact that Utah’s best player, Markkanen, is largely a dependent threat who requires great advantages to be laid out for him to make the most out of his efficient scoring ability. Without good passing, Markkanen tops out as just “fairly threatening” offensively, which is catastrophically too low for a top offensive option. Modern NBA defenses can easily annihilate teams with poor spacing ability, and they will certainly do so against Utah lineups consistently featuring two poor shooters at all times.

(Talen Horton-Tucker will take and brick a bunch of threes; Kessler’s distance shooting is fantastically theoretical at this point and it is annoying to hear it be discussed as anything at all; Kris Dunn had some real verve last year as a shooter but seems to have relapsed back into previous apprehension and skill check problems; John Collins faces a real “prove-it” year with his shooting after suffering a troublesome, and seemingly permanent, finger injury).

The passing and shooting deficits are really going to hurt the Jazz, and it’ll be hard for Utah to finish above, say, 13th in offensive efficiency. Yes, Utah started out destroying defenses last year, but they totally whimpered out at the end of the season when they stopped trying after sending facilitator Mike Conley out in a trade.

Conley isn’t some cure-all or playmaking wizard; it’s more an indictment on the current roster that nobody can come remotely close to his solidly good level of vision and passing. Fifteen Jazz possessions per night, minimum, are going to feel like someone trying to describe to you how they got home after having four 14% ABV Belgian Quintupels.²

(SALT CITY HOOPS PLUG: The Salt City Hoops LIVE POSTCASTS (& Beer) are BACK for this season! Join me and special guests on YouTube, Playback, and Twitter Spaces after select Jazz games to hang out and chat about the Jazz game and the NBA at large. As always, I bust out an incredibly rare and astounding craft beer to show off and talk about as well—there are some amazing ones on tap this year! Subscribe to the YouTube channel here, follow us on Twitter here and here, and Bluesky here, for updates).

The defense will always bottom out as “pretty okay” as long as Kessler is on the floor, but their big man defense behind Kessler is non-existent. Dunn’s passing and defense should vault him above others to play more minutes for the Jazz despite his shooting misadventures, but it doesn’t appear Hardy agrees; this hurts the overall defense in turn. Utah has a few credible individual defenders (Markkanen and THT chief among them), but they aren’t good enough and/or won’t play enough minutes to raise the Jazz defense above 20th in the league.

It all adds up to a middling win total for the Jazz when we get to April. That isn’t to say they won’t be fun to watch, or that they are stuck in this spot forever. To everyone’s credit, the Jazz play with force and intention that is entertaining to watch. This kept them in many games at the tail end of last season for which Utah had no business participating. Importantly, Utah intends to run through the tape at the end of the season, instead of tanking, because they owe their first round pick to OKC (top-10 protected) and appear to be intentional about finally relinquishing that obligation instead of, once again, passing it over to next year. But I just don’t feel like there is enough here to get into Play-In contention. I’m picking the Jazz to win 32 games.

MVP

Lauri Markkanen +50000

MVP seasons typically involve tremendous team success combined with extraordinary impact by an individual. Even if the Jazz are somehow great, they will be driven by the collective force of the team. Markkanen’s game isn’t ball-dominant enough to have that singular effect on winning.

Coach of the Year

Will Hardy +3500

These are actually the 9th-longest odds for Coach of the Year, which I think is way too low. The story on COY winners is pretty rote: either a team is thoroughly dominant through the course of the season, or a team wildly outpaces expectations to a solid playoff-worthy win total. I’m bearish on the Jazz, but there are colorable paths to a top-6 playoff seed. If that happens, Hardy is going to be top-3 on voting ballots. That sort of simple if-then story is worthy of much shorter odds than +3500. If you carry any optimism about the Jazz this year, this is the ticket to punch for a few bucks.

Defensive Player of the Year

Walker Kessler +2200

What a damn delight it is that we’re already having this conversation so immediately after losing Gobert. Kessler has chasms to cross defensively to catch up to Gobert’s peak, but he’s already such an incredible force on that end that he earned tons of Rookie of the Year plaudits last year and is in the “credible” betting range for DPOY this year.

Weirdly, I think even if Kessler takes another leap and a half and is truly astounding defensively, he actually will suffer from residual voter fatigue left by Gobert. There will be people who just won’t give a nod to another offensively-limited Jazz center. If Kessler makes strides offensively that Gobert never could do (a credible three-point shot; the ability to dribble a basketball two or even three times), that actually might sway votes in his favor for Defensive (!) Player of the Year. Crazy, you say? I mean, have you seen who votes for these awards? A lot of voters care about really dumb things. This has nothing to do with whether Kessler would deserve it—just talking about likelihood of actual award voting, here.

Making an All-Defense team would be extremely cool, though, and that’s in range. No odds I can report on that front.

Rookie of the Year

Keyonte George +6000
Taylor Hendricks +10000
Brice Sensabaugh +20000

The odds for KG (yes I’m calling him that; yes I need to h/t Gage/@KGszn69; yes I’m aware of Kevin Garnett ‘The Big Ticket’; yes it’s funny to only me and like three other people to be intentionally dense about it) seem deep but are actually are 7th highest on the board. It speaks to his wild success in Summer League that extended into a successful preseason that he has already jumped up 9 spots from his draft selection (and, well, 10 if you count Chet Holmgren’s rookie status as a 2022 redshirt rookie).

I sit somewhere in the middle of the optimism/pessimism scale for KG, and with the glut of backcourt options for the Jazz, I just don’t see him getting enough minutes, especially early³, to provide that immediate hold on contention for the award. Hardy has proclaimed a couple times that there are no free minutes, and it appears as if the Jazz brain trust isn’t going to force him to play guys just for organizational direction and lab-testing before someone like Keyonte is actually worthy of the PT. All-Rookie First Team should be the goal (again, no odds on this).

Just a few short weeks ago, KG’s odds were the same as Hendricks’. That was worth a few bucks. At +6000, it’s priced as needing only a couple wild coincidences to happen, when, in fact, we’d need quite a few things to happen for KG to take home the hardware⁴. Apropos of nothing a lot of things, I suspect voters feel really stupid about Malcolm Brogdon winning ROY over Joel Embiid just because Embiid only played 31 games.

Hendricks has (unfortunately?) proven far too raw to provide the impact necessary to win this type of award. I’ll be looking for tangible NBA skills out of him rather than counting future All-Star appearances. We won’t find out for a long time if Sensabaugh’s smooth scoring ability can hang in the NBA, but I think we’ll see him plenty in the doldrums of post-trade deadline basketball.

Sixth Man of the Year

Jordan Clarkson +1800
Collin Sexton +5500
Talen Horton-Tucker +6500
Kelly Olynyk +10000

Jordan Clarkson will probably end up ineligible for this award, as he started all 61 of his appearances last year and looks slated to start at least half of the games this year⁵. If he’s eligible, the Jazz need to have a playoff season and he needs to add even more passing chops to his game to get into award consideration (if he improves his passing another level, he almost has to start out of sheer necessity). Voters like him, fans love him, but winning this award requires some sort of superlative scoring season and team performance that I don’t think is in the cards for Utah this year.

Sexton and THT are far more intriguing options at their price. However, each are weighed down by the paradox that if they’re so good to be 6MOY candidates, then they probably need to be starting for a team deficient in passing and playmaking. That said, I can see a path where THT starts as a good fit with the starting unit, but only tops out at 18 minutes per game while Sexton/Dunn/Agbaji/George provide closing minutes at the 1 and 2 spots. That leaves a window where Sexton is averaging 18ish points in 28 minutes per night, and, if he improves his assists, Sexton could have the box scores to get some votes.

I don’t, however, see a real path where THT is coming off the bench so much AND producing the counting stats worthy of 6MOY votes. If THT (rightfully, in my opinion) is a substitute, I want to see competent team organization, rugged defense, and just the right amount of pure chaos. If THT has the counting stats to turn voters’ heads, something else probably went horribly wrong.

Lastly, I’m only flagging Olynyk because I think his on-court value and utility is the exact kind of thing that should be rewarded by voters of this award. They usually just vote YAY POINTS, but the ability to fit with multiple styles off the bench while providing a little bit of everything across the floor to maximize team success is what we should really be doing here.

Collins’ arrival means Olynyk will come off the bench, making him likely eligible for this award. I have big problems with Olynyk’s inability to snag defensive rebounds (which will be exacerbated in some of these guard-heavy bench lineups for which he’ll play center), and no amount of charges drawn will make up for the lack of rim protection. But the snapback aficionado⁶ is the only plus passer for his position on the entire damn team, has incredible feel and ability for shot selection and aggression, and smartly defends within his capabilities while giving a lot of fucks on that end of the court. I think he’s exceedingly likely to be traded this season, so I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the things he’s done well in Utah. I’ve actually [gasp] enjoyed his stint as a Jazzman, which is not remotely what I thought I’d say today when the Jazz traded fan favorite Bojan Bogdanovic for him.

Most Improved Player

Walker Kessler +3500
Talen Horton-Tucker +6500
John Collins +14000

Just a couple quick hitters here that we have to touch on given the hardware added to Utah history last year. Note that, historically, a player needs to ascend to All-Star consideration after previously been thoroughly overlooked. Kessler will need a mid-career Brook Lopez-esque explosion in offensive dependence, output, and range for voters to remotely care about him for MIP (plus he’d also need to take a DPOY-level leap). I see the story for Horton-Tucker to ascend to stardom, but there is zero tangible elements for him to get there yet.

And I totally understand that longer odds are always sexier. I really do. They are siren songs from which we need to look away. But Collins at +14000 is the price worth raising an eyebrow for. Collins’ usage has been scant this preseason and he’s not yet fully operational from his previous peak. But if Olynyk is traded sooner than later, and Collins re-emerges as a secondary, or even co-primary option to Markkanen, there’s a LOT of attention that is available for John the Baptist. If he had just a little bit more punch to his game in preseason, I’d really consider this. But Collins’ great box score games will come in much more sparing doses than even +14000 will oblige.

Stats

The oddsmakers have a firmer grasp on who the hell the Utah Jazz are this year than last year, so we have a few more player props to wrestle with! Lets run through them:

Jordan Clarkson, 19.7 Points Per Game (-115 for each O/U)

Solid Under. While I think he’s a surefire bet to be Utah’s second-leading scorer — more on this in a group post coming later today on this website — fewer shot attempts and minutes are in Clarkson’s future with the tweaks made to the rotation. Sexton will be more available, THT will play more and regrettably shoot more, KG isn’t going to be gun shy as a rookie, and even Collins and Kessler will demand real targets offensively. Utah’s overall offense will also be a degree worse with the passing paucity, hurting everyone’s efficiency. 19.7 is a good line, but he scored 20.8 last year with a ton more responsibility and it’ll decrease by more than 1.1 with the new season. I’m thinking more like 18 points for JC IS A VIBE.

Collin Sexton 14.8 Points Per Game (-115 for each O/U)

Hammer the over. Sexton averaged 14.3 on just 23.9 minutes per game last year. At the very worst, his minutes were artificially limited last year for injury management. Even if his playmaking doesn’t progress in a way Hardy likes, the other backcourt options are sketchy enough that Sexton is guaranteed to get more minutes as long as he’s healthy⁷. 14.8 points per game should be a cinch in that case.

Lauri Markkanen: 24.5 Points Per Game (O +105; U -135)

Solid over. Not only are you getting the odds advantage for going over, I don’t see how Markkanen averages a full point less per game than last year. Even if the offense is overall worse and Lauri is less efficient than last year, nothing can really replace Utah’s dependency on Markkanen to do, what I eloquently call, “A Lot Of Shit.”

Markkanen averaged 28.7 points per game last year after the Jazz traded Conley⁸ on relatively pedestrian 45.0/30.9/87.4 shooting splits (58% true shooting; still above average). There are going to be some changes to the Utah offense this year, but featuring The Finnisher less isn’t one of them, and a small drop in efficiency won’t hurt his scoring average in the long run.

Lauri Markkanen Scoring Average Props: 24 PPG (-225), 26 PPG (+100), 28 PPG (+350)

While I’ve firmly established that over 24.5 points per game is solid, tying up money for a full season at -225 or +100 just really isn’t worth it. +350 isn’t fun enough for 28+ points per game; for something like this you want a good longshot option like +4000 for 30+ points per game to be a fun bet. Just put your money on the pure over/under and call it a day.

Walker Kessler 11.5 Points Per Game (O -110; U -120)

Over. Not solid, just…Over. Walker, Kessler Ranger is going to play a lot more minutes than last year, but, as we’ve seen with dozens of quality centers over the years, that doesn’t automatically translate to more points. More rebounds, blocks, even assists, sure; but, for purely dependent threats like Kessler, it just doesn’t happen that way. Kessler has a significant degree more butter than Gobert offensively, but not so much that plays can jailbreak with a low post pass to Kessler at the end of a shot clock. The occasional three won’t help his scoring average as much as it will titillate our fantasies.

“Hold on a second,” you said, annoyingly, “I thought you said to bet the over!” Well yeah; Kessler averaged only 23 minutes per game last year. He should firmly go way, way over that this year. There will be 8 or 9 more plays per game that are designed with Kessler as a finishing option (not THE option, just…an option) than last year. Gobert averaged 9.1 his first full season as a starter, and 14.0 in his second, for reference⁹. This is a really well-set line, and I just think it’ll settle in the high-11s/low 12s, with an upside in the 14s. Kessler won’t go lower than 10.5, and that’s a high floor.

6+ Assists Per Game: Nobody

It’s just so notable that there isn’t anyone even remotely worth sportsbooks putting a token bet up there for assists per game. We know none of Clarkson, Sexton, or THT will get there. KG certainly won’t. Dunn absolutely can (and is the most likely to) get this number, but you can’t really bet on guys slated to get 12 or 15 minutes per game. This team is really, really short on real passing skill.

Walker Kessler Rebounding: 10+ RPG (-410); 11+ RPG (-125); 12+ RPG (+260)

These are way, way too generous. I wouldn’t touch these at all. Kessler averaged 8.4 rebounds in 23 minutes. Yes, his minutes (and skill) will go up, but to the tune of 3 whole boards? I don’t think so. Also, in adding Collins, the Jazz added a terrific rebounder to take the place of Olynyk (a famously poor rebounder). And if you think there is any credibility to Kessler spacing for threes, that takes him completely out of offensive rebounding position (offensive rebounds accounted for 37% of Kessler’s rebounds last year).

10+ rebounds is a very reliable bet here, but those odds are asking you to just donate to Vegas’ investment fund for a small return later. Go get a high-yield savings account instead.

Also, for posterity, you can get OVER 11.0 rebounds for +110 in a couple places. My estimate has him somewhere in the high 10s. A gun to my head, I’d pick the over for the better odds, but I’m only wagering one Canadian dollar for it.

NBA CHAMPIONSHIP 2023-2024: UTAH JAZZ: +50000

Hey, twice as good as last year!

I always buy a single lottery ticket when the jackpot is over a billion. I’ll never win, but I get $5 of value out of the joy of wistfully thinking about the possibilities with a real ticket in my hands.
When it comes to insane longshot bets, you need some figment of an apparition that suggests that victory is possible. In the NBA, these apparitions are couched in the variance of what we don’t know about a team: “well we don’t really know what this team could be, it could be a championship team!”

The problem with the 2023-24 Utah Jazz is that we know way too much about who these players are and how they fit together. We’re looking for marginal improvements here, some rookie flashes there, and maybe some surprising punches around the edges. But, even with KG’s solid Summer League, nowhere on the roster am I thinking that a player or two is just a step away from congealing a championship squad.

But!

I can cobble together some pieces that are greater than the sum of their whole. Keyonte can play so well as to earn Rookie of the Year in any year not featuring Victor Wembanyama. Markkanen develops a lot more of his isolation game to threaten defenses. Sexton, THT, Clarkson, and Dunn all elevate their passing just enough that having two of them on the floor presents a problem for the opponent rather than a problem for the Jazz. Kessler could be on everyone’s honorable mention lists for the All-Star Game. Collins re-establishes himself as a force in the NBA and as the second-best player on the Jazz. Hardy coaches a hard-playing, fun team to a 4-seed, where home court advantage buoys Utah to a second round appearance. And from there, anything could happen. This is more tangible than fellow +50000 odds-holders like Washington, Portland, and Charlotte.

And so, as usual, Vegas can steal ten bucks from me for the Utah Jazz to win the NBA title. But, back in reality, I’ll be watching the micro-level improvements that will dictate if the Jazz have much higher odds to win the Larry O’Brien in future years.