Utah is one of those seven sub-.500 clubs in the West, but what you repeatedly hear about the Jazz on the NBA grapevine is that they long to be more competitive again. They don’t want to be down there with all the other tankers. They miss being a Western Conference factor, which hasn’t happened since the 2021-22 season after Utah’s trades to move off of Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell.
So ...
Difficult as it can be for rival teams to read the intentions of a front office that now houses Austin Ainge as well as Danny Ainge, more teams than not that we speak to are increasingly convinced that the Jazz are more likely to try to add to their Markkanen-led core this Trade Season rather than trade Markkanen away. Markkanen is averaging a career-high 28.5 points per game in his ninth season to build on a monster national team summer for Finland. It’s true that the 28-year-old has still yet to log a single playoff minute in the NBA, but he unabashedly loves Salt Lake City. There is a strong case to be made, once you take it all in, for building around the 7-foot Finn.