This year, Walker Kessler has had a fantastic season with the Utah Jazz; the 23-year-old is averaging 11.3 PPG, 12.3 REB, and 2.4 BPG and is shooting an efficient 67.3% from the field. There is no doubt that the Jazz love him, and not just because of his charismatic and charming personality, but because he is a fantastic player that stars in his role. This summer, Kessler is going to be eligible to sign his rookie extension, and I am skeptical of how much we should/will pay him, so I decided to do some digging into the previous championship teams to see how much is too much for Walker Kessler.
Cleveland Cavaliers v Utah Jazz Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images
The Options:
The way I see it is that we have three options when it comes to Walker Kessler:
Offer an extension to Walker Kessler
Trade Walker Kessler while he is still on his rookie deal (value)
Don’t extend him and let him become a restricted free agent in 2026
Now, the safest bet would be to offer him a rookie extension, which is probably what the Utah Jazz plan on doing, at least according to The Athletics’ Tony Jones:
I would expect the Jazz to offer Walker a lot of money. I would not expect them to offer Walker max money. But the Jazz value him greatly and I expect the two sides to work on a possible extension https://t.co/XFHULxuJKd
— Tony Jones (@Tjonesonthenba) March 24, 2025
My question to the Utah Jazz front office would be, how much is “a lot of money”? There is a difference in offering Walker Kessler $20M/yr AAV (Average Annual Value) and offering him $30M/yr AAV, even though he is deserving of a high dollar amount.
Now I have PTSD from previous Utah Jazz teams where we have paid an inside big a large sum of money, which made it more difficult than it should have to put a competent team around him and other star-caliber players.
In my opinion, you can be good with an inside big man. The Utah Jazz have had some really great teams in years past where they had a defensive anchor that blocked shots and rebounded the ball very well, and then on the other end, they caught lobs and set nice screens. However, I do not believe that the center position is the most important part in roster construction when it comes to winning a championship, especially if they are not Jokic, Hakeem, Shaq, or Tim Duncan. If they are that level of player, then of course you build around them, but Walker Kessler is not even in the same stratosphere as those players, nor will he ever have that level of offensive skill.
My Research - the past 12 NBA Champions/Runner-ups
While thinking about every possibility with Walker, I became conflicted and confused, so I turned to what our goal is as a franchise, and that is winning a championship. When debating whether or not to keep Walker, it shouldn’t be about how he stars in his role — because Walker Kessler is amazing — it is about looking at historical data/patterns of what has led teams to win championships in years past.
Since we are talking about Kessler, how important is the center position? And what % of the cap should centers take?
I dove into the previous 12 NBA champions and runners-ups to see how their money allocation was distributed by position.
Spotrac only lets me go so far back, otherwise, I would have gone all the way back to the 2000-01 season. However, only going back to the 2011-12 season may represent a more accurate approach to the modern game and what leads to championships now. I will touch on both eras a bit as well.
Salary cap % by position
Dray Mottishaw
Here we have the past 12 NBA champions dating back to 2012. As you can see, out of the starting 5, the center position tallied the lowest % of the salary cap at 13.31%. For next year (2025-26 season), 13.31% of the salary cap is a little less than 〜$20M and with the salary cap growing each year, the AAV for a 4-year deal would be in the ballpark of a 4yr/$88M deal.
I assume Walker Kessler gets more than that. There is an argument that Walker Kessler has been the best player for the Jazz this season which will be used to get him paid. If I were to guess, and this is just my opinion, I would say that if we do extend Kessler that I would expect him to receive closer to $30M/yr than $20M/yr and that kind of worries me quite a bit.
The past starting centers to win an NBA Championship are:
Kristaps Porzingis / Al Horford (Porzingis [injured], Horford floor-spacer, 37 years old)
Nikola Jokic (top 15 player of all time)
Kevon Looney (inside big man)
Brook Lopez (floor spacer)
JaVale McGee (inside big man)
Marc Gasol (floor spacer)
Kevon Looney (inside big man)
Zaza Pachulia (inside big man)
Tristan Thompson (inside big man)
Andrew Bogut (inside big man)
Tim Duncan (top 10 player of all time)
Udonis Haslem (inside big man)
Joel Anthony / Chris Bosh (Anthony inside big man [injured], Bosh floor spacer)
If you want to go back further, you will find guys like Tyson Chandler, an All-Star, multi-time All-Defense center, Defensive player of the year, and All-NBA player who the Mavericks acquired out of a trade. You will also find Shaquille O’Neal and Pau Gasol, Hall of Famers.
My point is that you should not be paying a starting-level center a bag before you have your TRUE star players. A lot of these guys were making hardly anything compared to their star counterparts and weren’t even considered top 10 players at their position by the time they won a championship. For example, Zaza Pachulia is a bum, yet he got the most starts at center in the playoffs & won a ring.
Championship Runner-Ups
Dray Mottishaw
Something I found very interesting while doing this project was how many starting-level players were on rookie deals. Most of these rookies are lottery picks as well, from Derrick Lively to Utah Jazz legend Russell Westbrook. I think it’s really interesting to see how impactful some young players can be when it comes to getting to the finals.
Now, almost half of these teams are run by HOF’ers such as Stephen Curry and LeBron James, but when you are trying to win a championship, you have to find those guys and build around them in the draft, and the Utah Jazz are trying to land a superstar this year.
Playoff Win Shares - How valuable actually are Centers?
Playoff Win Shares
Basketball Reference
Here are the past 30+ years of top 7 players in playoff win shares. As you can see, the center position is hard to find if you are not on the level of Jokic, Gasol, Duncan, Ewing, Shaq and all of the other elite big men to play the game of basketball. The most important players are wings and players who are elite on the defensive side of the basketball. However, some truly gifted offensive players such as Luka Doncic and Stephen Curry crack onto the scene. Guys like Ayton and Jamal Murray being here, you just have to laugh at because they are anomalies in a sea full of defenders and Hall of Famers.
“Walk” with me:
As for Walker Kessler, I love the guy, I think he is amazing, but in my opinion, I would probably move him, and that might unsettle a lot of you. I understand that it is annoying trading our good players away when we don’t have a whole lot going on, but it is my goal to preach patience so that we can reach something greater. I know Kessler has a lot of value right now and I would like to capitalize on that while we can instead of missing the window like we did for Lauri Markkanen this past summer — even though I was in favor of keeping him at the time.
If the Utah Jazz land Cooper Flagg in this year's 2025 NBA draft, I fear that we will find ourselves in no man's land standings wise, ultimately giving up our pick to the OKC Thunder in one of the best draft classes we have seen in years — it is better than the Cooper Flagg draft when it comes to top tier talent, I am talking multiple potential No. 1 options and the Jazz NEED to capitalize on it.
We can find another center later. Even if they aren’t as good as Walker Kessler in that role, it has been proven that having multiple elite players that aren’t centers and paying THEM is more important than allocating a sizable % of our salary cap to a traditional big.
The bright side is that even if we do extend Walker at a higher rate we are not in a rush and have time to figure things out. We are years away from being true competitors and haven’t found our guy who will lead us to the promised land yet, but one day that will be the case, and I do not want to deal with an overpaid big man. Not again, Utah.
Don’t hate me <3. Go Jazz. Maybe I am missing something, but I would love to converse with you in the comment section!