Heartbreaking Jusuf Nurkic news further proves what everyone knows about the Jazz

As the 2025-2026 season comes to a close, more and more NBA teams that would fit under the label of tankers have suddenly dropped their guys for the rest of the season. The Utah Jazz have now looked into that as Jusuf Nurkic will miss the rest of the season due to nasal surgery.

Amazon Prime’s Chris Haynes has announced that Nurkic will not play for the remainder of the season due to his upcoming surgical procedure.

This isn’t news that should be swept under the rug, as Nurkic turned out to be better than many expected when the Jazz first acquired him. Now that he’s out, along with Jaren Jackson Jr., the Jazz’s frontcourt will be severely limited going forward.

In addition to other teams doing this, Domantas Sabonis and Zach LaVine are now doing it too magic before the season – the Jazz have pulled out all the stops to ensure they are bad enough to get a high lottery pick and keep it away from Oklahoma City.

This time, the league can’t punish them for it, because even if the motive is obscure, it’s legitimate. For what it’s worth, it sounds like this has been a problem for Nurkic that needed to be fixed.

But the timing obviously makes everyone roll their eyes. Couldn’t this have waited until April? It is hoped that Nurkic makes a full recovery and is ready for next season, but it is downright impossible that the timing of this is not suspicious.

So what will the Jazz’s frontcourt rotation look like now?

Again, the Jazz are now behind Nurkic and JJJ on top of Walker Kessler, meaning their frontcourt rotation will look like Lauri Markkanen, Kyle Filipowski, Kevin Love and Oscar Tshiebwe. Not much to brag about, and don’t be surprised if Markkanen is suddenly absent for an extended period of time.

However, this gives Love a chance to showcase himself a bit with two months left in the season, even if his market won’t be that strong anyway. This should also give the Jazz a better look at Ace Bailey, who has been exciting this season but deserves a chance to show Utah how good he can be.

Either way, the next two months are going to be tough. It was tough enough with the Jazz benching Nurkic and Markkanen in the fourth quarter, so while they won’t do that again this season, it’s going to be tough to see the Jazz lose any more of their games with a severely depleted frontcourt.