There is a growing sentiment that the Utah Jazz will be one of the more important teams in the NBA this summer.
It’s to the point that the team has come up in conversations among league insiders throughout the NBA Finals.
Yes, you read that right. While the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers play for the title, the Jazz — who finished the 2025 season with the worst record in the NBA — have been a regular topic of discussion.
(To be fair, so has a potential Kevin Durant trade from Phoenix. And after the Desmond Bane trade, the trajectories of the Orlando Magic and Memphis Grizzlies have been widely discussed, too).
Zach Lowe, Bill Simmons, Brian Windhorst — go down the list of prominent national pundits, and almost all of them have talked about the Jazz in the last couple of weeks, specifically how Utah is a team to watch this offseason. Maybe even the team to watch.
Why, exactly, is a matter of debate.
Will the Utah Jazz be buyers?
At his introductory press conference, Austin Ainge — Utah’s new president of basketball operations — didn’t mince words about the strategy of the team going forward.
When asked about tanking, a team-building approach that for the Jazz meant the manipulation of minutes and/or holding out the team’s best players throughout much of the 2025 season, Ainge said, “You won’t see that this year.”
Some have taken Ainge at his word.
In a recent appearance on “SportsCenter,” during which Windhorst was analyzing the trade that sent Bane from Memphis to Orlando, Windhorst said that the Jazz should no longer be considered a rebuilding team. Instead, Utah has intentions on genuinely competing in the Western Conference, despite three straight years of steady decline.
“There’s not anybody in the Western Conference who is really rebuilding right now,” Windhorst said. “Everyone’s kind of got the gas put down. Including the Jazz. The Jazz are intending to try to turn it up.”
If the Jazz were to try to improve rapidly, the team has the assets to pull it off.
Utah has nine first-round picks through 2031, and that doesn’t include pick swaps where the Jazz can get the more favorable of two picks. Nor does it include the Jazz’s 2026 first-round pick, which is projected to be in the top eight (if it falls lower than that, it conveys to Oklahoma City).
Austin Ainge, president of basketball operations for the Utah Jazz, speaks during an introductory media availability with Utah Jazz Governor Ryan Smith, left, at Zions Bank Basketball Campus in Salt Lake City on Monday, June 2, 2025.| Tess Crowley, Deseret News
Orlando sent four first-round picks to Memphis (plus a pick swap) to land Bane (plus rotation players for salary-matching purposes). The Jazz have the ammunition — pick-wise — to land a pair of players the quality of Bane or better, in theory.
Utah also has multiple notable expiring contracts it can use in a talent acquisition deal, namely those of John Collins, Jordan Clarkson and Collin Sexton.
And then there are the numerous young prospects the team has, multiple of whom could be enticing to a team trading an established pro.
All of which is to say, the Jazz have the assets to do what Windhorst suggests. And quickly, too.
Will the Utah Jazz be sellers?
There is a completely different train of thought about why the Jazz will be one of the more notable franchises in the NBA this offseason, however.
As in, polar opposite.
CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn laid it out on Monday. Namely, that the Jazz have solid players that contending teams could want (he singled out Sexton), have enough cap space to facilitate deals and the team doesn’t have to “tank” if it trades away most of its solid players. The team can just be bad and develop talent without any real tanking shenanigans. (A byproduct would be that Utah would still have a shot at a top pick in 2026 and avoid giving that selection to OKC.)
“The younger Ainge himself said that the Jazz would not tank next season, but to be fair, in the Western Conference, they really won’t need to in order to get a high draft pick. If they just bring back last year’s team and play everyone the appropriate amount of minutes, they are going to miss the playoffs comfortably,” Quinn writes.
“That is almost certainly still the goal, whether Ainge will admit it or not. This team isn’t close enough to trade their way into the playoffs, much less genuine contention. If anything, the question here is whether they’ll make any further rebuilding trades, not whether they’ll function as surprise buyers.”
Quinn goes even further beyond the normal names that have been speculated for years as being movable by Utah.
He questions whether it is worth it to extend Walker Kessler, arguing that the Jazz are so far away from being a legitimate contender that they should still be squarely in asset-acquisition mode.
“Walker Kessler is now extension-eligible,” Quinn writes. “Does it make sense for a team with no young players trending toward stardom to pay significant money for a rim-protector that offers little offensively? That’s a worthwhile question.
“Here’s a bigger one: What is Lauri Markkanen’s trade value now that he’s signed a max contract? The Jazz were demanding in last year’s negotiations. They almost always are when it comes to trading veterans. But at his current price and given the down year he just had, his market is going to be smaller. Two or three first-round picks? Sure, though the matching salary attached probably wouldn’t be great. Four or five? No way, not with a $46 million cap number.
“You’ll hear about the usual suspects. It wouldn’t be an offseason without John Collins rumors. Collin Sexton is ready to help a winner. One of these days someone is finally going to pry Jordan Clarkson loose. But the upheaval at the top of this organization suggests some measure of frustration. It’s not clear what exactly the Jazz are going to do, but they don’t seem like a team eager to stand still.”
What will the Utah Jazz do?
Abrupt turn to contention or a deeper descent into a rebuild — either option is possible for Utah this summer.
Exactly what the Jazz will end up doing remains a question for now, but one thing is certain: The Jazz aren’t going to stand pat.
Since Danny Ainge came on board in December 2021, Utah has been involved in 16 trades, most of which included multiple players leaving and/or coming to Utah. The Jazz have not been shy about getting involved in the trade market, either as one of the primary teams involved (think the trades of Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell) or as a facilitator (think the Luka Doncic and Jimmy Butler trades).
That track record, coupled with a tight free agent market — the Brooklyn Nets are the only team in the NBA that has the ability, right now, to offer a contract to a free agent this summer for more than $30 million a year — means it is more a matter of when, not if, the Jazz start making waves this offseason.
Only one thing seems really certain about Utah this summer: Moves are going to be made.
Ryan Smith, right, chairman of Smith Entertainment Group, and Danny Ainge, an executive for the Utah Jazz, listen as Brigham Young University Athletic Director Tom Holmoe speaks during a press conference announcing his retirement at the end of the school year held at the BYU Broadcast Building on the university’s campus in Provo on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025.| Isaac Hale, Deseret News