Bobby Marks’ 2025 Utah Jazz Offseason Guide | NBA on ESPN

Bobby Marks’ 2025 Utah Jazz Offseason Guide | NBA on ESPN

All right, happy Tuesday. Hopefully everyone is great out there. Um, still a couple days before the NBA finals start on Thursday. You can uh go on espn.com. We’ve got a new article out there today uh on the 15 extension candidates to watch this off season. uh veteran extensions, not um Chad Homegrren or Jaylen Williams, two players that are extension eligible uh this off seasonason, but certainly Shay Nicole Yokic, it is a starstudded uh extension piece. Uh we’ve it’s funny this off seasonason was supposed to be build as one of the great in a long time and most I would say the majority of players wind up signing extensions because the rules are uh favor certainly players to uh go there that direction and guaranteed money means things means more than becoming a free agent here and that’s why you saw Anthony Davis and Damen Lillard and Jaylen Brunson and the list goes on. So, you can go on ESPN.com and you can find that article um on the NBA page. We are going to do an offseason video on the Utah Jazz. Um we have put up some um teams that finished in the lottery yesterday was Brooklyn. We’ve done San Antonio. I think we’ve got about five more teams to go. And uh we are going to put Utah up um on YouTube. Their offseason article you can find on ESPN.com. There are 28 teams on the one doc. We are we will take a snapshot of their finances and put that out. Also, you can look at where they are financially. We’re going to go into that uh in a minute. Um but I figured Utah just because they made a I don’t want to say a change. Um an addition to their front office when they named Austin Age as their pres president of basketball operations. Certainly Austin has been with the Celtics for a long long time and and did a lot of good work there with um with Boston certainly from a scouting um standpoint and has great pedigree with his uh dad uh Danny and he joins the front office certainly that includes um uh Justin Xanic who is uh one of the best in the business and um they’ve got a I think they’ve got a terrific ownership group and in Ryan Smith uh an ownership group that’s willing to put resources uh to this roster. It doesn’t seem like it right now, but I know when they get to that level, when they eventually get to that level, that the resources will be there. Utah is um Utah is an interesting spot because a the Western Conference is a bear and I I don’t need to tell Jazz fans that they’re in an interesting spot because they’re in this rebuild and I guess since they’ve traded when they traded um I say Lillard Mitchell and Goar and that group back in um I think it was 2022. Um yeah, I think it was 22. They basically when usually when you trade away like four fifths of your starting lineup, you kind of like hit like major tank mode um or basically ground zero mode. Um and they didn’t do that. They kind of hung around for two seasons and they overachieved and they were 500 teams and then they basically bottomed out. And then when they bottomed out they were basically at, you know, the eighth pick or the ninth pick. never had a top um they never had a top five top five top five pick to kind of add to their roster this year. They basically kind of from the outset certainly there was a priority to play their younger players and and and go in a direction where the goal was to get a a bottom pick and you enter the night of the draft or the night draft lottery with the you know I don’t I don’t want to say the favorite because how the lottery odds work now it there really is not a favorite maybe if you’re picking fifth or sixth but you go from 17 and 65 you had the number one pick heading into the lottery and you fall all the way back to five. I’ve been there. Uh happened in with me in Brooklyn or New Jersey. Uh we had number one pick and we fell a three and we took Derek Favers and John Wall went to to the Wizards. There’s still going to be a lot of good value as far as where Utah is right now at five. Um depending on where you want to go. Do you want to go guard Trey Johnson, Jeremiah Fierce? Um do you want to go bigs? Um it’s a guard heavy draft. Um, do you want to move up? Try to get up into maybe number two, three. Um, you’ve got 521. Another team that’s got the bingo board. 52143 53. They have a ton a ton of draft equity. Certainly, they cashed in that um some of those picks um from Cleveland and uh Minnesota turned into 2031 Phoenix unprotected first. uh they still have one of the two or at least two out of the three um in the in those years and they are listen if they want to move up into the top two or three or they want to move out they’ve got plenty of um optionality to go about doing it. I I do think when you are drafting outside of the top six, uh the one thing that that that’s hurt them is there’s no like blue chip chip franchise level prospect on this roster. Why Oklahoma City turned it around. Um, and certainly them getting fortunate with Chad at where they picked at three and dra and drafting Jaylen Williams outside the top 10 was a really good pick. Um, when they made the Paul George trade, they got Sheay back and she has developed certainly into an MVP. Why Detroit turned it around is they had the number one pick and took Kate Cunningham who for this year for for this year when you get help around him and he’s healthy and they’ve got shooters things turn around quickly. I think the jury and I’m not going to write out write off their draft um the pick the players they’ve picked whether it be Isaiah Collier who had a good year or Kee George or Walker Kesler or Taylor Hendricks who is out with the injury um Cody Williams certainly there but I do think we’re kind of in this unknown period as far as if there’s a blue chip prospect and when they don’t have a blue chip prospect as a franchise level player that you have drafted it makes things ext- extremely more difficult as far as how you kind of turn this thing around. They might get that in this year’s draft um where they’re picking at five or as I said maybe they have maybe you want to move up to number two and you feel like Dylan Harper is that that guy there. Um I’m expecting Utah um to be aggressive this off season here. I there is part of you that says, “Well, they should probably just go through the same process because next year’s um draft is really good, especially at the in the top two.” But as we’ve seen, like winning 17 games guarantees you nothing. So, how do you go about doing that? I think a lot of it the the attention is going to be on the three expiring contracts. Um John Collins, who’s got a player option, I’m expecting him to opt in. that there’s just not a market. No, it’s not what John Collins had a good year. It’s just that the market is not there for teams spending 27$28 million. John Collins, Colin Sex, and um Jordan Clarkson, both players are entering the last year of their um their contract. What happens with them? Certainly the marketin um who now is of course is trade eligible. That was a big thing. You know, he was not trade eligible because he reenoed and extended. Um what do you do with um Larry Markin? Um certainly you need good players if you’re going to turn this thing around and he is certainly a good player. Um the expiring contracts for me is kind of what I’ve circled as far as what they want to do. Listen, I feel like we every time we we do one of these, we’re talking about like Giannis or one of these like I if if he ever became available, they would call. And I think they would call and all the other 29 teams would call just because you don’t get one of those players come around very often here. But I am expecting Utah to um to be aggressive here. They are uh they’ve got 15 players under contract. There’s a ton of guys that have um partials or non-G guarantees um with their with their group. Um Mahik um Juang, KJ Martin here. Um, their flexibility from a roster standpoint is that uh they’re over the cap, but they do have the flexibility to take back money in a deal. They have the flexibility to use um their non- tax mid-level exception to acquire player in a trade or sign a free agent. Um 15 million in non-G guaranteed as I said, but but they’re right at the cap. Uh the Collins opt in is June 27th, so certainly pay they’ve got a couple trade exceptions here. Um certainly the priority is the draft getting it right. Right. You got to nail the draft as we’ve talked about. What are your options in the draft with five and 21? As we talked about the expiring. Um well here’s the other thing too with uh with Utah is how much does cap space mean to you in 2026? It’s a little bit different because next off season it’s going to get better. uh there’s going to be at least half the league, maybe a little bit less, are going to have a lot of money out there to spend. Um so does that mean anything to you? Um are you willing to take back contracts that extend into 26 27? They could have 70 80 million in room if all three players come off your books here. So that’s another thing to keep an eye on. The extension for Kesler is interesting. um first player to average at least two blocks per game in each of his first three seasons since Tim Duncan. Uh you have you have up until October 20th to extend him. He’s got a $14.6 million free agent hold. So anything above that Sean is what happened here. Oh wow. Tibs got fired. No kidding. stunner. Um, wow. All right, let’s finish Utah. Um, so you’ve got anything above that $ 14.6 million number um is will take away from cap space there. Um, as I uh Collins and Ston are also extension eligible. And as I said, you’ve got 11 first round picks, including a combined five unprotected first rounders. Uh but uh look, I’m like reading my phone. Um they are in good shape from a draft equity standpoint. So that’s a little bit about Utah. Sorry I got distracted by by Tibs getting fired, which I totally disagree on. Um and we’ll go from there. Have a great day.

Bobby Marks details his 2025 offseason guide for the Utah Jazz.
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