NBA.com Issues One Major Question for Jazz After Brutal Season

If it hasn’t been made clear this season, the Utah Jazz’s rebuild has gone into full effect as the team’s officially suffered from their worst record in franchise history and completely leaned into their young talent up and down the roster.

However, through those efforts, the Jazz have managed generated a few big-picture questions for the future to come for this team. There’s signs to point toward Utah potentially gearing up for an upward trend in team state and overall optimism the near future, but some still propose areas of concern to note as to how long this rebuild could really take.

In the eyes of John Schuhmann of NBA.com, he outlines one big question for the Jazz entering a critical summer, asking if the rebuild has truly landed a quality starter in the past two drafts.

”What this season produces regarding the Draft is TBD. For now, there’s the question of if the Jazz have a quality starter among the six guys they’ve selected in the last two drafts,” Schuhman writes. “The most promising of the six is probably Taylor Hendricks, who suffered a brutal leg injury in the season’s third game. Cody Williams, last year’s No. 10 pick, has had a rough rookie year and ranked last in effective field goal percentage (39.1%) among 297 players with at least 250 field goal attempts. The Jazz also were outscored by 15.5 points per 100 possessions in his 1,060 minutes on the floor.”

Through their most recent two summers, the Jazz have secured a nice haul of young talent who’ve provided decent flashes to see their path as a future starter on a competitive roster coming to form with the right development. Still, each of those six still have shown at least one glaring hole within their game to prevent that 100% confidence.

Keyonte George is on pace to shoot under 40% from the field for a second-straight season and has huge defensive concerns. Brice Sensabaugh is a bucket-getter, but hasn’t shown a ton to offer outside of his shot-making. Isaiah Collier is averaging under 25% from three, Kyle Filipowski still has his respective questions to answer defensively, and Cody Williams is Cody Williams.

Taylor Hendricks, the most promising of the bunch, is set to come off a season in which he appeared in just three games thanks to a devastating ankle season-ending injury.

So, it’s easy to see why there’s doubts to be raised about the young core Utah has put together.

Again, each of the six have shown enough upside in one to two years to likely give them another season in the mix for the Jazz, but it does put a bit of pressure on the front office to ace this offseason, and most importantly, the draft.

Utah has done what’s necessary to get top odds in the lottery next month as one of the worst teams in the league, and potentially guaranteeing themselves a top-five selection if the cards fall in the right place for the final week of the season. Yet, it’s down to the Jazz brass to get keep the momentum moving to hit some home runs with potentially four total picks in this summer’s draft