Multiple players for the Jazz fail to deliver in a blowout loss to the Blazers: Keyonte George: 8 points on 34 TS%. Lauri Markkanen: 13 points on 39 TS%.
First year of non tanking not looking good for the Jazz as they start 1-5
https://www.espn.com/nba/game?gameId=401909896
I figure this is our karma-burning year. Play-ins next year baby! Or the year after.
Kinda crazy their sole win is a 1 point win over the pelicans
I frankly think that “losing culture” is a very real thing and the Jazz absolutely built it
I’ve never had any problem with tanking in terms of trading away veterans to fully rebuild but the Jazz on several occasions literally benched guys in the middle of games if they were playing too well
The Jazz deserved all the scrutiny they got for going that far and it’s not surprising it’s hard to immediately transition from that to trying to win games
Has Lauri ever played meaningful basketball? Chicago rebuilding years and then Utah rebuilding years
He went 0-2 in the play-ins on the 2022 Cavs and that’s about it lol
I totally forgot he played on cleveland
1 year, he was a main piece in the Donovan Mitchell trade
English isn’t my first language but is “on Cleveland” correct grammar? Wouldn’t it be “in Cleveland”
First game he shot terribly but in the second he had the best scoring game of any of the Cavs players
Finland beat Serbia and was 4th in 2025 eurobasket that was huge overachievement.
No
Jazz fans last year would gleefully tell you how losing was all part of a great plan
Why don’t they just sign a superstar FA?
Yes losing culture is a very really think, its tough to break and sometimes it takes a year or so for any organization to break it.
Actually, in the season after they traded Gobert/Mitchell and were expected to contend for the worst record in the league, they were surprisingly good out of the gate and ended up in 37 win purgatory. Basically took them out of the Wemby sweepstakes.
Out of all the years to truly tank, they didn’t do it that year. Even though they traded Gobert/Mitchell, they still had a few too many rotation caliber players on the team (Clarkson, Lauri, Olynyk, Sexton, THT). They overachieved to the extent that it probably bought Hardy 2-3 extra years of grace.
Ainge should’ve flipped Lauri awhile ago. Now the guy is almost 30 and people have probably concluded he’s not a real building block.
On the flip side, you’ve got the Kings who never really tried to tank and yet all those wins they got against tanking teams doesn’t seem to translate to success either
Perpetual bad teams will just be bad until miracles happen
Personally, I think you’re overthinking it and their roster just sucks.
yeah, the Grizzlies last season also benched Ty Jerome because he was playing too well and they are fine now.
Grizzlies have made the playoffs 3 times in the last 5 years.
different roster and coach
Their leader is a losing player his entire career and the Jazz didn’t bring in any vets with meaningful playoffs experience into the team to guide the young players, there is zero winning culture in that team.
Jazz were my biggest miseval this season. I thought they would easily be in the play in. Very surprising how bad they’ve looked
The team has good players that do not fit together at all. Injuries hurt too, but the Lauri/JJJ pairing was extremely awkward. Our bench is turbo ass too, it needs a complete overhaul. I think better health will improve things, but long-term, having 2 forwards that can’t create their own shots isn’t going to work. I think Lauri’s gonna find himself on a new team before long. Maybe JJJ too if Utah can’t land a center capable of maximizing his skill set.
Always thought the JJJ trade was weird. Like, isn’t Lauri kinda in that same role? And making hella money?
It made sense before Kessler forced his way out. Kessler is the exact kind of center JJJ can feast with. Still would’ve been weird with Lauri at 3, but I think Ace is taking his role before much longer no matter what. I think a 3-4-5 of Ace, JJJ, Kessler could’ve been good, but then Kessler threatened to sign the qualifying offer and that whole plan blew up. Then Nurkic got hurt and the backup plan blew up too. Which leaves us where we are now.
damn that’s true, kessler leaving right after was mainly it
They should have traded Lauri
Lauri seems like such an awkward player to build around. Simultaneously has a great but awkward skillset because he’s basically a 6’10 SG and no matter where you play him there’s a trade off, put him at SF and he can bully smaller guys but he also can’t stay in front of them at all, put him at PF and he can drag the bigs around and create a lot of space but he’s a crap rebounder so you need to have good rebounding wings to make up for it. I think PF is the lesser of two evils especially for a team like Detroit that can make up for the rebounding.
I do think losing both of your starting bigs almost immediately would make any team look very shaky though, especially with the depth you mentioned
Our bench is also beyond horrible. Our two guards either can’t shoot or can’t do anything besides shoot and Hayes is our best center who can play right now. If our top 7 can’t win the game, we lose
Nobody calibrated correctly for Walker being traded. On offense they don’t have enough ball handlers and nobody really knows their role.
Kessler has looked like a backup C in half of his games. Utah absolutely won that trade. Their core is 19, 20, and 22. It’s going to take more than 6 game for them to gel.
We won the trade but it makes us worse this year.
Just poor roster construction.
thought they’d be west Wizards but even the games JJJ played it hasn’t clicked. bro is just not a 5
i had them in playoffs.
why? lol
JJJ + expected growth of others. grizzlies are basically doing what i expected with this team
So many people jumped on that bandwagon and i just never saw it.
But personally i think Both Keyonte and Lauri and super overrated.
Keyonte is super overrated? Tbh feels like he’s overhated at times esp when he got his extension
I think most of us expected them to just rain down 3’s and do well. Granted I havent watched any Jazz this year but my guess is that they’re lacking leadership and a clear identity. When your veteran/best player is somebody that was shut down 3 years in a row for tanking. That’s gotta do something to your ability to turn up and win. Lauri’s never played any meaningful basketball.
Was only talking about keyonte man, but I agree with you on Lauri. Injuries on JJJ and Nurk suck too.
Turns out that building a losing culture by intentionally trying to tank for several seasons in a row ends up having consequences.
I’m shocked the players couldn’t just flip a switch and drop all their bad habits overnight.
Any team who loses their two main front court dudes is going to struggle. But sure it was definitely the tank 😭🤣😭🤣
The Jazz bench is not untalented, but the roster is entirely lacking some kinda heart/leadership. Keeping Lauri around after near 4 straight seasons of shutting him down to tank was certainly a choice.
Micah Nori deserves to be paid
Or Dundon is right that coaching is overrated
Will Hardy getting the handsome white guy bump– no other coach is considered good when they lose 2⁄3 of the game over a 4 year period
Handsome? He getting graded on a curve for that, too?
I always thought he looks like short Walker Kessler
Damn they do bear a strong resemblance
I feel like people think of Jordi Fernandez as a good coach too
Yeah as a nets fan he looked good for a 20 game stretch (probably also had some scheme novelty ppl hadn’t seen) and since then he’s been pretty bad.
He’s let Julius Randle steamroll the team this year
i wonder what if he took the celtics job post Udoka-gate
No joke for the first year and a half of Mazzula, Bill Simmons was talking like Hardy was the one who got away.
ppl were talkin crazy after that Heat team went up 3-0 lol
Brett Brown was. He had the Spurs dust on him too.
The front office forced him to lose though. I’m not saying he’s good or bad. I’m saying we have absolutely no idea because we haven’t seen him get a chance to really coach…
There is evidence he is a good developmental coach. Key has a huge leap last year, and Ace has made major improvements this year. They developed Kessler enough that Lakers were willing to pay 2 unprotected picks for him.
Preach.
Going from spunky team with potential to actually putting it together isn’t always as straightforward as it looks on paper
I think they’ll figure it out if they stay healthy but I still don’t know what the plan is going to be for them defensively on the perimeter even if the offense does come around as I expect it will
Yeah I think the team will be what everyone expected, just by the second half of the year rather than right off the jump. Which I’m in hindsight, probably should have been what everyone expected.
Defensively Ace has massively improved and Okogie/Green are solid. Peterson had the tools, need to see if he can put it together or not, and Keyonte has show enough improvement to think he may end up just “bad” rather than “worst in league”.
We really need to replace Collier and Sensabaugh with guys who can fill their roles without being negatives defensively though. Their fouls, turnovers and generally bad defense is killing us at the moment.
Silent Frame knows ball. Ace Bailey has been a real highlight this year. DP is generating good looks, just needs to improve the shooting to put it all together. Jazz are on a good trajectory maybe a year behind what people had expected. As a fan that’s okay.
I wouldn’t even say improve, more like calm down a bit and hone it in. His shots are all on target, he just seems jittery. Comparing his shot to Collier is night and day
Too many players hat built losing habits for too long. They should play Lauri to up his value and than move him. Turning 30 this year, and has never made the playoffs.
They missed the chance to get a haul for him.
The Warriors were offering a lot and Ainge just kept asking for more.
Combined with trading Kessler and thinking Nurk plus Hayes could be your centers always seemed like a wild miscalculation to me.
I think all Ainge really wanted was Podziemski and he was considered off-limits. Which, seeing how he’s started off this season, fair enough
Its obviously been awhile so my memory could be off, but Ainge kept asking for more picks. It was already Wiggins, Moody, JK and multiple picks before he asked for Podz.
At that point it seemed like he had no desire to move him and was just looking to see how much he could extract before the Warriors stopped trying.
I dont think Podz was actually the holdup if the asking price has been reasonable.
Ainge has really slipped from where he was as a GM. Gone are the days of him absolutely fleecing Mchale and the Wolves for KG.
Seems like he wants to/thinks he can fleece everybody and there’s no point making a trade if it isnt one.
While having Lauri would be cool, im very happy we didnt make that trade.
Feel bad for the fans
appreciate you :(
I dont……they still sell out the games. Dont show up and ownership will become competent
Smug jazz fans acting like the team was going to flip a switch and be a top 6 seed. I said they would be lucky to be fighting for a playin spot
They just don’t really have that much talent in their roster even when healthy. I’ve been so puzzled by what they are “building”
We keep drafting high upside low floor guys. That has flopped.
Who has flopped exactly?
Cody Williams was the biggest for sure, dude is a massive bust
In 24’ who was a clear better draft pick still available at #10? I think they have generally done better than they have busted. Key at #16 was huge. Ace looking like a solid pick with the growth from year one to this year. Too many casual fans with bad takes. Jazz core is 19, 20, and 22. Things will be fine.
The game isn’t even over and there are already hit pieces lmao
We’re so bad and we deserve it so hard for that unethical tank. Hope we’re bad for a decade or more. Fuck what we did, fully.
At this point it’s a bona fide fact that the Timberwolves won the trade with Utah when they exchanged Gobert for Kessler and picks.
I’d also like to remind folks that Lauri Markkanen earns more than Rudy Gobert annually, and not that much less than Donovan Mitchell annually. Utah has been in this rebuild mode for a long time, and we need to blame the front office for this rebuild taking so goddamn long, but a small bit of that responsibility also lies on Lauri, who has proven to be completely incapable of playing winning basketball. Media and fans have given him a tremendously long leash for some reason.
“Incapable of playing winning basketball” is such a strange claim unless your definition is super narrow.
Lauri objectively made the Jazz much better and helped them win, that’s why they sat him so much.
If your definition is just “he couldn’t drag those teams to the playoffs despite the FO actively working against him” then your basically criticizing him for not being a top 5 player in the NBA, which is a weird criticism.
And how many unsuccessful rebuilds does this guy have to go through before we can make a declaration on him? His other teams failed as well.
That’s my point, what declaration? That he isn’t a top 5 player? You seem to think winning player = can drag bad team to playoffs. There’s always more context than that.
Nobody is asking Lauri to be a top five player in these comments. People outside of the top five can lead a team to success. Winning a championship is not the only barometer of success.
Lauri has never played in the post season.
Utah turned Gobert and Kessler into a ton of picks wtf are you talking about? What has Minny won? I don’t see any banners hanging under Gobert ’s regime. The basketball IQ in here is extremely low.
Minnesota is currently in the middle of their best era in franchise history as a direct result of this teade. Meanwhile Utah has been a consistent bottom feeder and their current outlook is that they’ll continue to be.
I’ll smoke what you’re smoking!
Their core is 19, 20, and 22. They are going to be fine. This year is about growth. Brunson didn’t accomplish shit until he was 30.
Minny hasn’t won’t a fucking thing. You can’t win a championship with Gobert. He’s so limited on offense and gets absolutely exposed every single playoffs.
Kessler is looking like a backup C in half of his games for the Lakers. Utah moved two dudes that aren’t building blocks for a championship team for a plethora of assets.
Worry more about the Knicks. You won’t get 3 bye rounds again in the East during the playoffs this year. Your squad will actually have to play basketball before the finals. Might not be the extreme cake walk you had last year.
Time will tell, that’s for sure. But we have watched Minnesota make multiple deep playoff runs since trading for Gobert. A this is just my opinion, but I don’t see this Jazz core making multiple deep playoff runs with the way the western conference is looking for the foreseeable future.
Sorry to our brothers in purple
Time to combine and form the JaKings.
Jazz needed to sell Keyonte high and build around Peterson
Someone with some sense. People said I was crazy for saying so.
They needed to draft Caleb Wilson tbh guy should have gone #1
Caleb was never going top 3 but they should’ve drafted Boozer over Peterson forsure
Lauri never making the playoffs
The boys had a great night out last night clearly 😆
Even worse, JJJ is hurt again and Memphis is doing better without him rn
People had the jazz top 7
First time Hardy has had to coach to win. Is he capable? So far, not impressed with his questionable sub patterns, play calling. Not a fan
They were my breakout team candidate at the start of the season. Things look bleak right now. You figure Ace and DP will be fairly inconsistent with efficiency because of the type of players they are and the youth. You don’t expect that level of inefficient play from Keyonte and Lauri since they have some good experience under their belt (Lauri especially of course).