When Jazz basketball returns this week, it ushers back into our collective attention a number of pretty fun story arcs.
And honestly, by virtue of the Jazz's offseason moves, this season will be the most earnest attempt yet at a true youth movement — and a chance to explore the potential of nine recent draftees and a one-time All-Star.
Here's one writer's power ranking of the most interesting subplots about the Jazz as they prepare for on-court action with yet another young group of players.
His Airiousness
It's pretty unfair to heap this kind of pressure on a kid who just barely turned 19, but the reality is that nothing about this season will reveal as much about the club's medium-term future as Ace Bailey's trajectory.
He doesn't even have to look super amazing as a rookie, or add a lot of winning value (something precious few rookies do). Rather, if during the grind of an 82-game season there are moments of brilliance that hint at a path to some degree of stardom down the line, then the future starts to feel instantly more promising.
Plenty of talented and toolsy, 6'8" to 6'10" wing stars didn't have amazing rookie seasons. Some Bailey's predraft comps included Paul George, Tracy McGrady, Michael Porter Jr. and Rashard Lewis. None of those guys averaged double figures in their debut seasons or made an all-rookie team, and only MPJ shot particularly well out of the gate. So there's really no floor he needs to hit to preserve the possibility of turning out special. It's just about finding moments in which the raw talent just can't be ignored, even if it those moments don't add up to great stats or wins right away.
If he has enough of those moments, it's not hard to start getting tempted to think about the Jazz's future differently. They already have one impact player on the roster, and they should be poised to draft early again next June. So any indication that Ace is on his way as a foundational piece means the Jazz might have their new core identified sooner than most folks imagine.
That's why Bailey will have a lot of eyeballs pointed in his direction.
The return of Taylor Hendricks
Until Bailey walked across the Barclays Center stage last June, Hendricks had been the Jazz's highest draft pick in this rebuild cycle. But after an uneven rookie season and an injury that cost him virtually all of year two, we still need to see him operate as more than an idea.
It took a while for Hendricks to earn regular minutes as a rookie, but once he did, there was some pretty encouraging stuff. His shooting improved to 38% from three, 43% from the corners, and 57.8% overall true shooting. He showed potential as an on-ball defender even against some pretty lofty competition. He was ready for a bigger role in year two, but a gruesome injury just nine quarters into the season derailed that.
He's now back and not being at all shy when talking about his goals; he proudly announced on media day that he wants to be a top NBA defender. That's a pretty bold aspiration for someone still under 1,000 career minutes, but the instincts were there, and the body may have caught up since we saw him last. The leg injury didn't keep him from the weight room, it appears, as he's visibly bigger in the upper body.
He's already used the preseason to answer some questions about how fluid and/or timid he might look after a missed year. But there are more reasons why he'll be an intriguing watch: How will he move with his healed leg and bigger upper body? Will the injury have affected his psyche or his appetite for contact? Can he channel the outside shooting again? Can he occasionally dribble a basketball too? Will there be rhythm calibrations? Can he still guard the best opposing player, almost regardless of position?
The minutes battle at guard
The Jazz's second selection in each of the last three drafts has been a point guard. Now all three need reps to continue to grow, which is why the questions around these three very different guards are all very interconnected. So we'll tackle Keyonte George, Isaiah Collier and Walt Clayton Jr. as a group.
George has had a ton of opportunity, as the minutes leader on the 2024-25 Jazz (and virtual co-leader in 2023-24, just 52 total minutes behind Collin Sexton). Utah drafted him with the hope of making him more of a lead guard type after he mostly played the two (and even three) in college. It didn't happen right away and they eventually moved him into more of a bench sniper role midway through last season. But coaches have lauded his offseason work, so maybe he'll have a fresh chance to show he can engineer an offense.
Moving him to the bench didn't just maximize his knack for scoring; it also unlocked Collier's natural ability to see the court as a creator. Collier supplanted George as a starter, but he never got his 3-point percentage up over 30%. His low free-throw percentage (in college and with the Jazz) could indicate that he's not really destined to turn around the worrisome outside shooting marks. But his ability to bust defenses open with his driving and passing is a superpower the Jazz could use, especially post-Sexton and post-Jordan Clarkson.
There was already a tug-of-war on minutes between those two, and now Clayton complicates that with his arrival after a scintillating senior season. He was the head of the snake on an NCAA title team, and he has looked very mature in the preseason. (He is, after all, the oldest of the three, despite being drafted latest.) Clayton's preseason shooting was less than awesome (34% from the field, 18% from deep), but his collegiate numbers indicate he'll be fine there eventually. Free-throw shooting is also a pretty reliable indicator of pro shooting success, and he was solid from the stripe at Iona and Florida (and went 13-for-13 in preseason).
It will be hard to give all three of these guys signifcant point guard minutes. Obviously the Jazz can slide someone to the two to create more opportunities, but that has downstream impacts. So the distribution of opportunities here is bound to be a storyline throughout the season.
Oh yeah, the All-Star
With all the young guys whose growth could serve as an inflection point, it's sometimes easy to overlook just how much we could still learn about Lauri Markkanen that would be relevant to an eventual title pursuit. That starts of course with the question of how long he'll be in Utah at all, but the Jazz continue to insist the suspense there is overblown.
On the actual court, Markkanen's base level of awesomeness makes it hard to be more curious here than with the guys listed above, but there are still questions about how the Jazz could and should use him. Last year he was mostly a brazen shot-hunter, and that's fine given what the goals were then. But it would be interesting to use this interstitial phase to experiment with his potential as more than an elite off-ball weapon.
In his All-Star season, Markkanen finished 60 possessions directly out of P&R action as the ball handler. The subsequent two seasons featured 28 such plays — combined. That may never be a huge part of his diet, but why wouldn't the Jazz occasionally sprinkle those in as a fact-finding exercise, since they're not exactly trying to maximize wins anyway? Similarly, isolation attempts represent less than 5% of his possession mix despite the fact that he's consistently been above average at it, and he hardly ever posts up smaller defenders anymore. So maybe when we say he doesn't have self-creation in his repertoire, what we really mean is that he just hasn't had the reps to explore it. He had fewer drives per game last year than Svi Mykhailiuk.
During his EuroBasket run, Finland trusted Markkanen to create off the bounce, a tantalizing thing for a 7-footer with his skill set. It would be fun to revisit his 2022-23 shot profile when he wasn't exclusively shooting off staggers and pindowns. I'd also love to see him evolve more as a passer; he had two or fewer assists in 41 of his 47 games played last season, and that's odd for someone who touches the ball as often as he does.
Playing time for young wings
Brice Sensabaugh continues to look like a professional bucket-getter. He followed up a ridiculous summer league performance with 56-43-89 shooting splits in the preseason. He might be poised to take over Clarkson's old role of designated bench gunner, especially if George continues to start. He's a knockdown shooter, and he has good rim finishing stats despite not being a leaper. It's not hard to imagine him having something like a 16-ppg season if he plays a few more minutes and gets to the line more often (one clear area for offensive improvement).
Only 15 other players at 6'6" or under have ever posted a stat-qualified season at .610+ true shooting in their first or second year in the league.
Cody Williams, on the other hand, is still struggling on that end: 39-29-83 preseason shooting splits after a 32-26-73 rookie season. He has however shown some defensive ability and an improved body. At this point every minute he plays will be in the name of development, but that's OK given where the Jazz are at.
For now, they're both specialists in a way: Sensabaugh is a scorer's scorer, and Williams will mostly be on the floor to guard. But both need to round out what they're lacking if they're going to be relevant pieces on a playoff team someday. The problem is that it will be hard to get both of them big minutes. Bailey and the three point guards will take up most of the 96 available backcourt minutes each night. Sensabaugh and Williams can both shift to the 3, but then you're running into Markkanen and Hendricks on the depth chart. And that's assuming zero minutes for the veteran ball handlers, and it's just not realistic to expect that Kyle Anderson and Mykhailiuk won't play at all. Meaning that these two will really have to earn their playing time.
What is Flip?
After playing an estimated 83% of his rookie minutes at center, every second of Kyle Filipowski's preseason was spent next to nominal center. That's a pretty clear sign that the Jazz think his most fruitful NBA path is as a 4.
With Flip's vision and shooting, he could certainly operate as a floor-spacing 5 at one end. The conundrum with the second-year pro is that he hasn't looked like someone who can anchor a defense. Opponents are generally unbothered by Flip's interior presence (71% rim defense), so he may spend the year proving he can move his feet well enough to be considered a credible defensive forward. That might be his key to a long career.
It will be interesting to watch to see Flip's net rating splits when he's on the court with different centers: Walker Kessler, Jusuf Nurkic, Kevin Love. And then when every blue moon or so they play him as a smallball five, let's pay extra close attention to how the defense looks in those minutes.
Kessler combos
Kessler is of course going to be a really important piece of what the Jazz do. By nature of the fact that he's already a solid starter-quality big, there's less mystery around him than his younger brethren. And unlike Markkanen, we already sort of understand the outlines of Kessler's role on an eventual good Jazz team. That's why I have Kessler lower than the others.
But that certainly doesn't mean he's a finished product, as evidenced by his sudden burst of outside shots late last season and his eye-popping eight assists in a lone preseason outing. I'm most interested to see Kessler in combination with other players. Which guard will help unlock his prowess as a rim diver? Will it work if the Jazz go super long with Bailey-Markkanen-Hendricks-Kessler and a guard? Can the Walk-Flip combo provide more than it did in 261 minutes last year (-21.1 per 100)?
The vets
And then, of course, there are the five non-star vets. Nurkic appears to be the backup center for now and has been kind of interesting as a ball moving big man with some floor spacing. Love, Mykhailiuk and Anderson only played situationally in the preseason, and Georges Niang won't debut until sometime in November.
Honestly, the season shouldn't be about these five guys. But there will be times when their involvement will help us learn something new and different about one of the other 10.
