The Utah Jazz have been bad this season, but not because they are hopeless. While injuries have played a role, guys resting or having strange “illnesses” that keep them out of games point to a similar outcome to last season: a tank job to hold onto their first-round pick.
It gets old and hurts the team in the long run because the core of the team knows nothing but to lose, many of them for their entire NBA careers. This is not the way to build a great team, and Jazz fans know it.
Losing sucks for every player and every team, but when it persists and there is no visible way out, it can frustrate everyone involved: the players, coaches and fans. Even if it’s a “final design choice,” it’s best to see actual measurable progress so everyone sees the light at the end of the tunnel.
Sarah Todd, the Jazzbeat reporter at the Deseret News, recently discussed this, and she suggested the Jazz roster was manipulated to stop them, leaving the team unable to find his identity. And how healthy players have been used for this in recent matches.
Players like Taylor Hendricks, Cody Williams, Kyle Filipowski and Isaiah Coller suffer as a result, with roles that aren’t clearly defined or focused on winning basketball, and lacking the support of a team structure that isn’t set up to fail in the lottery this summer.
Where did it all go wrong?
The team, which started the season with promise, could see the loss of Walker Kessler as the turning point that made the season hopeless. However, the Jazz have gone 14-21 in games in which their star player, Lauri Markkanen, has played, a pace good enough to stay in play-in contention when projected over the full schedule.
But when Lauri sits, they are an abysmal 1-13 and losing by an average of 16 points per night. And while the Jazz were 10-15 on December 15, Lauri was held out of three of the next four games, starting a 3-10 streak that destroyed any good vibes, quickly destroying any hopes of getting into the play-in or leaving the tank.
And we saw it in the team, the constant lineup changes, not knowing who was in and who was out, leading to a 3-14 mark in January, one of the worst marks in franchise history that looked a lot like last March, when a tank lineup went 1-16 in a 17-65 season.
Ultimately, Jazz fans will grow tired of watching the struggles on defense, the lack of a competent big man rotation, and the direction pointing to a bottom-eight record. They vote with their wallets and stop coming to the games until things improve. It’s happened in other cities with much larger fan bases than Utah’s.
The Jazz brass should take note and prevent this from happening, even if it means taking the risk of winning a few too many games this year. Jazz fans want to see measurable progress and have something to advocate for.
The team has a great cap situation, a young roster overall, the best player signed long-term, and enough tradable pieces to turn things around and reach a 30-40 win zone in 2026-27 and be a playoff team in 2027-28. That’s what the fans see, and let’s hope management sees it too and gets the ball rolling towards success quickly.
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