When Austin Ainge was named Utah Jazz president of basketball operations earlier this month, he was asked what his philosophy was when it came to manipulating players’ minutes or games played in order to tank during the regular season.
“You won’t see that this year,” he said.
That wasn’t necessarily a declaration that the Jazz were going to be a team that would try to rack up wins. Rather, [it was a signal that the Jazz would play the players on the roster](https://www.deseret.com/sports/2025/06/02/utah-jazz-austin-ainge-tanking-2025-26-season/) without forcing head coach Will Hardy to rest them, hand out DNP’s or play lineups that made no sense.
If the Jazz were going to lose games, they would be doing it the old-fashioned way — by being outmatched by the competition.
Over the last two days, the Jazz have made several moves to make good on Ainge’s promise and keep the team on track for developing the young talent.
On Sunday the Jazz traded Collin Sexton to the Charlotte Hornets and on Monday they agreed to a buyout with Jordan Clarkson and waived Johnny Juzang.
The Jazz aren’t quite ready to start adding stars or win games. They don’t have a solid idea of which young players could be core pieces moving forward and need more time to evaluate the players they have and maybe bring in more young players to evaluate.
They don’t want to give up haul of assets to trade for a star until they’re sure they have a good foundation to build on, and they don’t want to risk their top-8 protected 2026 draft pick by keeping too many veteran players on the current roster, so next season they might be bad on purpose, but they aren’t going to tank by resting healthy players.
After the Jazz traded Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert in 2022, they tried to find a trade partner for Clarkson, but they were often looking to get positive value in return. Now, three years after the teardown, the Jazz don’t have a lot of negotiating power.
The rest of the league is aware of the Jazz’s current situation — they need playing time for the young players on the team and they owe a top-8 protected pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder next year. In other words, the Jazz need to open up the roster, clean house of players who aren’t a part of the future and they still need to be bad next season.
With that being the case, the Jazz would be hard pressed to find teams that are willing to part ways with future assets or players with potential to take on the contracts the Jazz no longer want. The result: Sexton to the Hornets for a negative value player (Jusuf Nurkic) and a buyout with Clarkson, who is expected to land with the New York Knicks.
With so many young guards and wings on the roster — Ace Bailey, Walter Clayton Jr., John Tonje, Keyonte George, Isaiah Collier, Cody Williams, Brice Sensabaugh — the Jazz couldn’t afford another year of pretending Sexton or Clarkson were a legitimate part of the future for the Jazz.
What’s left is to see if the Jazz can find a landing spot for John Collins and for management to decide if they can be bad enough to still keep Walker Kessler and Lauri Markkanen on the roster.
Past results and the inexperience of the rest of the roster leads me to believe that the Jazz can absolutely lose enough games to keep their 2026 pick, even with Kessler and Markkanen playing, but those are also the two players who would net the Jazz a positive return, so management isn’t going to completely shut out that possibility.
For those fans who were clamoring for the younger players to get some more run so we can actually see how they measure up against the rest of the NBA — you’re about to get your wish. Next season will feature a Jazz team that is largely made up of players who have three or fewer years of NBA experience.
It’s probably not going to be very pretty, and that’s the point.