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Apr 11, 2025; Salt Lake City, Utah, USA; Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George (3) controls the ball during the second half against the Oklahoma City Thunder at Delta Center. Mandatory Credit: Chris Nicoll-Imagn Images Chris Nicoll-Imagn Images

Utah Jazz Land Among NBA's Basement Floor

Originally posted on Utah Jazz on SI | By Jared Koch | Last updated Jul 28, 2025 1:00 PM ET

After most of the dust has settled surrounding this NBA offseason and roster ironing out ahead of the coming season, a few early projections stacking up the best and worst teams in the league have begun to increasingly pop up as a result.

And for the Utah Jazz, while they did have a relatively productive offseason for their long-term goals and vision of the roster, as of now, not many are feeling too optimistic about their status among the league's best.

The Athletic's Law Murray recently stacked up a new edition of power rankings from 1-30 across the league, laying out some thoughts for how each team may be gearing up to fare. And in the case of the Jazz, they found themselves as the 28th-ranked team in a tier labeled "Basement Floor."

"The Jazz went with the high-ceiling player in the draft, selecting Bailey fifth. Bailey basically replaces Clarkson on the roster. Later in the first round, Utah went with national champion Clayton, who takes Sexton’s vacated roster spot. Sexton was traded to Charlotte for Nurkić, the appetizer to a three-team trade that sent Collins to LA and Kyle Anderson to Utah. There must have been a UCLA quota on the roster, because Johnny Juzang has been waived and Kevin Love is not expected to play in Utah. Taylor Hendricks is still recovering from his gruesome leg injury suffered early last season. Utah is somehow even bigger than last season’s team, but how much better the Jazz can expect to be will come down to the progression of their growing developmental corps. Nine of Utah’s top 13 players were in the last four drafts."

Only two names were listed ahead of the Jazz in Murray's rankings: the Washington Wizards (29) and the Brooklyn Nets (30)–– both in wildly similar places in terms of where things stand in their respective rebuilds. The Charlotte Hornets (27) and New Orleans Pelicans (26) placed just ahead of them, but also were stuck apart of the "Basement Floor"

It's far from the most optically appealing place for Utah to be now, but picture-wise, the Jazz understood the assignment. They drafted well in the form of names like Ace Bailey in Walter Clayton Jr., shipped out veterans taking heavy minutes like Collin Sexton, Jordan Clarkson, and John Collins, and kept the heavy developmental approach going into the coming season.

For a rebuilding, small market team trying to build from within, that's a textbook approach to trying to maximize an NBA offseason. But with such a landscape likely comes the struggles in the standings as well, which, for the Jazz, is exactly what needs to transpire for their best chance at another high-end prospect to add into the fold of this rebuild.

Those lottery aspirations may inevitably drop the Jazz to a bottom-three ranked team again, as they were last year. However, for the structure Utah and their front office are building, everything is going according to plan.