I remember the 2022-23 Utah Jazz getting off to a 10-3 start in Will Hardy’s first season as head coach. Lauri Markkanen and Jordan Clarkson were leading a roster that had just been remade and, for the first time in years, no longer included Donovan Mitchell or Rudy Gobert. Around the league, people wondered whether Utah could actually stick to its plan to lose games. Maybe Hardy was simply too good a coach. Maybe this would turn into one of those Danny Ainge teams that accidentally became competitive. The parallels seemed obvious.
Well, no. Utah found its way to the bottom soon enough. Hardy helped guide the team through the rest of that season and the next three, making the Jazz, by my count, the only team besides the Process-era 76ers to tank so openly for four straight seasons. Somehow, they’ve received a fraction of the criticism.
Now the 2026-27 Jazz have begun their first supposedly serious, no-tanking season with a 1-11 record. Their lone win was a one-point home victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, who have had their own rough start. Since then, Utah has lost 10 in a row, despite finally putting together a roster that looks as if it might be capable of doing something besides losing on purpose.
Maybe they are tanking again. Maybe Hardy, who didn’t have a winning season during his first contract but was still extended through 2031, will coach for all nine years of his deals and keep that career winning percentage around .326. But then what was all the losing for? Did years of supposed development, and a rebuild so extreme the NBA changed its lottery rules, really lead here? Are injuries the explanation? Is Utah trying to lose again? Or is this just a bad team?
The biggest sign that the Jazz meant to compete was the addition of Jaren Jackson Jr. He tore his MCL and is expected to miss six to eight weeks after getting hurt on October 27. That’s a significant loss, but the roster shouldn’t be this bad even without him. Utah has plenty of talent on paper. It just hasn’t turned into wins over the past four years, or in the first dozen games this season. The shooting numbers are ugly: the Jazz rank 28th in field-goal percentage, and 29th in offensive rating, true shooting percentage and effective field-goal percentage. If those stats aren’t your thing, here’s the simpler version: their point differential is minus-11.5, worse than last season’s minus-8.4. They finished 22-60.
It’s fair to wonder whether any of these first-round picks will become real contributors. I’m still not sure Keyonte George can put up numbers on a good team. Top-10 picks Cody Williams and Taylor Hendricks haven’t lived up to their draft positions so far, although Hendricks suffered a terrible injury before he had much chance to establish himself. That part wasn’t anyone’s fault. Still, teams don’t get endless chances to rebuild. Ace Bailey and Darryn Peterson may need to become stars if Utah wants to be more than a mediocre backdrop for short Lauri Markkanen and George highlight clips.
This may be the NBA version of my rookie-quarterback theory: either a player has it or he doesn’t. I’m not convinced it matters much whether a young quarterback spends a year sitting behind a veteran or starts right away. The argument for sitting can turn into a no-lose explanation: if he succeeds, it’s because he sat; if he struggles after starting, he should have sat; if he struggles after sitting, he was never going to be good anyway. I don’t buy it. Good quarterbacks were going to be good, and bad ones were going to be bad. Maybe Utah’s last four seasons are simply proof that the Jazz were always going to be bad.
After all, there hasn’t been much evidence that a team led by Markkanen can win consistently. He’s a good player, but he can be inefficient, and he isn’t much of a rebounder or rim protector. His three-point shooting has also slipped over the past two seasons. More strikingly, he has never played in a playoff game—not in Chicago, Cleveland or Utah. For all the seasons he’s been in the league, that part of his career is still blank.
Years of losing can shape a team in damaging ways. The Process 76ers seemed to teach a generation of players that showing up was optional and winning could wait. The focus was on building, as though a team could keep collecting pieces in a video game until a championship was guaranteed. Real life doesn’t work like that. I worry Utah has been driving around with a wrecked engine and four flat tires for so long that nobody noticed before getting onto the highway.
I wanted this team to be good. I loved Peterson in the draft and would have taken him first overall. But the Jazz are genuinely awful right now, and someone needs to change course soon. Otherwise, they’ll have tanked longer than the Process 76ers. That is not the sort of record a team wants.
