Utah Jazz are going all-in on developing young players for 2024-25 season

The Utah Jazz leadership duo of general manager Justin Zanik and CEO of Jazz basketball Danny Ainge looked around the league this offseason, listened to offers, made inquiries about some players and ended up coming to the conclusion that there weren’t any moves to be made that would significantly change their chances of winning an NBA title in the foreseeable future.

So, they decided to keep their three draft picks from last year, roll on with three more in the 2024 draft and go all-in on developing young players in the hopes of finding someone who can be a part of a future contending team.

“We decided our plan was to completely throw our focus into our young guys and the best player on our roster, Lauri Markkanen,” Zanik said Friday. “Lauri helps our young players develop. He’s a developing leader and you can’t have just a bunch of young guys trying to raise themselves ... So, when it became apparent that we couldn’t find the right pairings to add to Lauri, which we were going to (look for) no matter what, we had to pivot the other way.”

Securing Markkanen was the first piece of that puzzle and signing him to an extension that will give the Jazz control for four years following the 2024-25 season.

The next step was making sure that the Jazz were secure in who they had at the helm of the ship. Will Hardy is heading into his third season as head coach of the Jazz, on a deal that would take him through the 2025-26 season with a team option for the 2026-27 season. The Jazz brass briefly asked one another if they should pick up that fifth-year option and without hesitation, everyone said yes.

“It was a quick yes from our whole group,” Ainge said. “So yeah, that was pretty easy. We love Will, we love the direction he is (going), we love the teammate that he is. And, I mean, he’s really excited for this year with the chance to develop these young players. So we’re excited.”

Now the focus truly turns to the players, and a group of seven players under 23 years old that the team is going to be investing a lot of time into this year — Walker Kessler, Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, Brice Sensabaugh, Cody Williams, Isaiah Collier and Kyle Filipowski.

Obviously there are other important players on the Jazz roster, but the Jazz aren’t confused about who they are or what kind of players they will become. But they need to figure that out about those seven players. And because they make up the bulk of the roster, there is going to be more opportunity than there ever has been on the Jazz roster for them to play.

So, expect to see more regular playing time for all of the youngsters on this roster. Expect to see growing pains and players being thrown into the fire and given lots of game reps, because the Jazz are intent on learning as much as they can about this young seven.

“There’s going to be opportunities where it’s going to look different,” Zanik said. “Our growth is going to come from developing our talent base so that we can win more games now and in the future. That doesn’t happen overnight. But what’s important about development is playing ... I think there’s going to be multiple opportunities for more young guys to play this year, because we simply have more young guys as part of our rotation. So it’s going to look different.”

In this case, “different” means younger, more inexperienced, and will come with a lot of unknowns, in the hope of having more clarity and more experience by the end of the 2024-25 campaign.