The Jazz had a relatively quiet offseason after finishing the 2024/25 season with a 17-65 record, the worst mark in the NBA. Utah had a 52.1% chance of staying in the top four at the 2025 draft lottery, but the team lost what was essentially a coin flip (47.9%), landing at its draft floor at No. 5.
In addition to selecting former Rutgers wing Ace Bailey with the fifth pick, the Jazz were also involved in a pair of trades last summer. The first saw the team send Collin Sexton and a 2030 second-round pick to Charlotte for Jusuf Nurkicand the second sent John Collins to the Clippers in a three-team deal that netted the Jazz a 2027 second-round pick, Kevin Love, Kyle Andersonand a traded player exception.
It’s hard to say if the Jazz had any intentions of trying to be more competitive in ’25/26, but considering they would have owed their 2026 first-round pick to the Thunder if it landed outside of the top eight, the team was certainly incentivized to finish near the bottom of the standings again to ensure that didn’t happen. And Utah wound up being near the forefront of the tanking conversation in an unusual season in which several teams were especially focused on draft positioning due to the widely perceived strength of the 2026 class.
The Jazz would likely point to starting center Walker Kessler suffering a torn labrum in his left shoulder in training camp, an injury he aggravated just five games into the season, as the beginning of downward trend for the rest of ’25/26. They were 2-3 when it was reported that Kessler would undergo season-ending surgery and just 16-35 after a win at Indiana snapped a six-game losing streak on February 3.
That’s also the date the Jazz made one of the more interesting deals ahead of the February deadline, acquiring Jaren Jackson Jr., John Konchar, Vince Williams Jr.and Jock Landale from the Grizzlies in exchange for Kyle Anderson, Georges Niang, Taylor Hendricks, Walter Claytonthe Lakers’ 2027 first-round pick (top-four protected), either the Cavaliers’, Timberwolves’, or Jazz’s 2027 first-round pick (whichever is most favorable), and the Suns’ 2031 first-round pick.
Memphis had renegotiated Jackson’s descending rookie scale extension during the 2025 offseason in order to bump his ’25/26 salary high enough to sign him to a new veteran extension that reflected the value of a regular All-Defensive contributor who had made All-Star appearances in two of his previous three seasons. Jackson will earn $49MM, $50.5MM and $52MM over the next three years before he has to decide whether to exercise a $53.5MM player option for ’29/30.
Utah, meanwhile, projected to have a good deal of cap room this summer, and rather than using it on free agents, the team made a pre-agency move for a player signed to a lucrative long-term contract.
The Jazz have been atrocious defensively in the four years since they traded Rudy Gobert to Minnesota, ranking 23rd, 30th, 30th and 29th in the league in defensive rating from 2023-26. Jackson, who turns 27 in September, is a former Defensive Player of the Year who’s versatile enough on offense to play in a jumbo-sized frontcourt that also features Kessler and Finnish star Lauri Markkanen.
However, Jackson’s fit with the team remains theoretical for now — he only made three cameo appearances for the Jazz after the deal, having undergone surgery to address a benign growth in his knee, and he didn’t get a chance to play with Kessler at all. While the sample size was obviously tiny, the team did perform very well when the former No. 4 overall pick was on the court.
Shutting down Jackson was the first in a series of “future-focused” moves for the Jazz, who ruled out Nurkic and Markkanen for the remainder of the season shortly thereafter. Keyonte Georgewho had a breakout third season and was dealing with ankle injuries at the time, only played a handful of games to finish out ’25/26.
Unsurprisingly, those tanking maneuvers resulted in the Jazz falling down the Western Conference and NBA standings, as they went just 6-25 over the final two-plus months to finish with a 22-60 record. That tied Sacramento for the fourth-worst mark in the league.
The Jazz won a tiebreaker with the Kings ahead of the draft lottery which turned out to be highly consequential, as Utah moved up from No. 4 to No. 2 on lottery night while Sacramento fell from No. 5 to No. 7. Winning the tiebreaker also guaranteed Utah could end up with no worse than the eighth overall pick, meaning the selection was guaranteed to stay with the Jazz even if they hadn’t gotten lucky in the lottery.
While four years of losing isn’t easy to stomach for fans, the Jazz are well positioned going forward as a result of their good fortune in the lottery. They’ll be able to add a potential franchise-changing talent on a very cap-friendly contract, locking in four years of team control and giving the front office time to determine the best ways to build out the roster.
Utah also enters the offseason with a surplus of future first-round picks and the financial flexibility to continue to seek upgrades on the trade market, though the club lacks the sort of mid-sized contracts necessary to add another near-max cap hit like Jackson’s.
The Jazz’s Offseason Plans
The Jazz have three major decisions to make this offseason: Deciding which prospect to select No. 2 overall, figuring out what a new contract for restricted free agent Kessler will look like, and determining how high they’re willing to go in rookie scale extension talks with Keyonte George.
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