This is going to be a fun offseason forJazz fans. Here's a tool to make it even more fun and let you design your own 2026-27 Jazz roster.
The Jazz are finally ready to round the corner toward a more competitive mode. To do so, they'll need to complete a winning roster around Lauri Markkanen, Jaren Jackson Jr. and the rest of their young core.
The ever-talented Zarin Ficklin[fn]Also the architect of this new version of Salt City Hoops.[/fn] knows how much Jazz fans love to weigh in on the questions that will shape this next era of Jazz basketball, so he created a tool to let you build your ideal roster: The Salt City Hoops Free Agency Simulator.
For the decisions you make in the tool to make sense, here is a quick primer on the underlying rules behind this simulator (not to mention real-life NBA roster construction).
Roster building 101: cap space and exceptions
The NBA has a salary cap to ensure some degree of competitive balance. It will be somewhere around $166 million this offseason, and teams below it can utilize their space under that figure to sign and acquire players.
But most teams are above the salary cap at any given point. Such teams are only allowed to transact using specific rules that allow them to conduct business even past the "soft" salary cap. Most of the tools teams use to make deals — from signing their own draftees and free agents, to making trades with other teams, and even signing minimum-salary players — are actually specific exceptions to the salary cap hammered out through collective bargaining between the NBA and the players' union.
Sometimes it looks like a team is under the salary cap based solely on player contracts, but they are operating over-the-cap teams because of temporary holds that must be added to their salary sheet in order to preserve their right to utilize certain tools. Those holds can be wiped away if teams renounce their right to use those exceptions, but that's why it's important to understand the decisions a team makes right from the beginning of the offseason. A team that appears to be below the salary cap based on salaries alone often has millions of other invisible dollars that force them to operate as though they're over the cap.
How much cap space will the Jazz have?
The Jazz will almost certainly operate as an over-the-cap team this summer.
They technically could create as much as $24 million in cap space (without trades), but that would require them to renounce all of their free agent rights, release players with non-guaranteed or option years, and sacrifice the $15.5 million mid-level exception. The reality is that they could probably accomplish more by keeping rights intact and keeping the MLE.
The Walker Kessler situation alone essentially clinches it. In order to preserve matching rights on the restricted free agent, they'll have to keep a $14.6 million cap hold on their books. That alone will make it so the Jazz don't have a way of creating at least an MLE's worth of cap room (without trades). So keeping options open with Kessler almost automatically means they're going to operate like an exceptions team.
Why do free agent cap holds matter?
Very basically, a cap hold reserves your right to retain your own free agent without needing to use another exception. Without that cap hold to keep the player's Bird, Early Bird or Non-Bird free agent rights intact, you can't sign even your own free agents without using some other tool. You could sign them using a minimum salary exception, but that's only good for up to two years. If you want to offer more years or if you need to exceed the minimum salary to secure their commitment, then you'd have to dip into the MLE. By keeping their rights, you can sign that player and still have the MLE to spend on outside free agents.
Kessler is the most obvious example, because in his case the cap hold is also required to keep matching rights. By keeping that $14.6M on the books, the Jazz can then offer (or match) any amount up to Kessler's maximum salary.
But there are other free agents for whom keeping rights could matter:
- Let's say Jusuf Nurkic can't find full MLE offers on the market, but doesn't want to come back for the literal minimum. If the Jazz have his rights, they could theoretically invite him back for $6 or 8 million[fn]Or any amount up to his max salary, theoretically.[/fn] without using the MLE to go over the minimum.
- Same goes for Kevin Love's $7.9M cap hold, although at this stage he might be in minimum-or-nothing territory.
- Elijah Harkless' and Oscar Tshiebwe's $2.2M cap holds technically enable the Jazz to re-sign them for up to the Early Bird max of around $14M, but there's no way those players will make that much. What the Early Bird exception does allow for, though, are those longer, team-friendly contracts with multiple non-guaranteed and option years. You can renounce them and still bring them back on a two-way or minimum deal.
None of these guys are so core to the future that you'd choose their cap holds over the opportunity to create actual, functional cap space. But since Utah will be operating over the cap anyway, it doesn't hurt them at all to preserve the rights to offer those players more. Those rights could also come in handy in some sign-and-trade scenarios.
So the first thing you have to decide in this tool is that: which Jazz FAs do you want to preserve the rights to? If you select to retain their rights, the tool will allow you re-sign them down below without using the MLE.
Options and guarantees
Svi Mykhailiuk ($3.9M) and Kyle Filipowski ($3.0M) both have cheaper contracts that the Jazz could wipe away if they want to spend that money elsewhere. They are both rotation players, so they might keep them on those low-cost deals, but that's another decision the simulator will prompt you to make.
Re-signing Jazz free agents
Next, you'll make decisions about the next contracts of any Jazz free agents whose rights you retained in the first step. If you elected to keep those rights, then you can choose a new salary for those players without cutting into the MLE. The field there will allow you to pick a new salary up to each player's max: $41.5M for Kessler, $58.1M for Nurkic/Love or the ~$14M Early Bird exception amount for Harkless and Tshiebwe. The new salary will replace the cap hold amount. (A minimum contract for any of those guys would count against the cap as $2.46M if it were a 1-year deal.)
Draft
As a starting point, the tool is counting the salary of the #5 pick. You can either keep that or imagine a different lottery outcome. As a reminder, our lottery watch tool is also live.
Once you've assigned the Jazz a pick number, go ahead and select one of the top prospects so he gets added to your depth chart.
Free agents
In all likelihood, the Jazz will only have the MLE and minimum contracts to add to their roster, so that's the way this tool is built. Select free agents you like and decide which mechanism you're using to sign them. The tool will limit your total MLE spending to $15.1M, although you can split that among multiple players. This field will be frozen if you're above the apron (a mini-MLE is available for teams with salary below the second apron).
Trades
No offseason tool would be complete without the option to construct trades. We don't yet have this connected to every single NBA player, so you'll have to manually add the name and salary of the guy you want to bring back in a deal. Also, the checker only verifies that the deal works on the Jazz's side (not the other team's).
Build and share your depth chart
Let other Jazz fans react to the team you've built! Once you've completed your roster, use the depth chart tool at the bottom to organize the team into a rotation, and then share your mock roster.
Note on other cap rules
We look forward to making this tool more useful over time, with enhancement to recognize realities such as minimum roster holds and/or different versions of the MLE. For now, it's meant to entertain and give you a way to tinker around with some of the most likely tools the Jazz will be using this summer.
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Enjoy the simulator, and let's see those depth charts! Tag Salt City Hoops in your X and/or Bluesky posts, and we'll share some of the most interesting roster ideas.
