The Utah Jazz may have hit big with their last two lottery swings, but franchise history still has a short, ugly list of misses when it comes to premium draft picks. Because the Jazz spent so many years winning enough games to stay out of the lottery, there simply weren’t many chances to whiff. That leaves just six players who fit the bill as true lottery busts in Utah.
There’s also no hiding behind draft-night technicalities here. If the Jazz got the player’s rights on draft night, he counts as a Jazz lottery pick. So yes, this list would have included Deron Williams and Donovan Mitchell if their Utah tenures had gone badly.
At the bottom of the group is Taylor Hendricks, the No. 9 pick in 2023. It’s a harsh label, and not really his fault.
Utah viewed him as a long-term project, but his broken leg early in Year 2 changed everything. He also had to fight through a crowded mix of bigs and young players before eventually being traded for Jaren Jackson Jr.
Even so, Hendricks still might turn into a useful NBA player. He looked like he was finding something in Memphis after the JJJ deal, and Jazz fans should absolutely want him to keep going.
Trey Burke lands next at No. 5 overall in 2013. Utah got him on draft night and hoped he’d grow into the point guard of the future.
Burke brought the scoring reputation that made him intriguing, but the efficiency never matched the hype, and his defense gave opponents easy ways to attack him. He had stretches where he looked the part, but too often the production was more flash than substance.
Once George Hill and Joe Johnson arrived, Burke became expendable, and the Jazz moved on.
Trey Lyles checks in at No. 12 in 2015. He wasn’t a disaster in Utah, but the Jazz wanted more than he delivered.
The fit never really clicked, and Lyles also made his frustration public by complaining about his role and later speaking negatively about Utah and the Jazz as a whole. There was at least one indirect bright spot: the Jazz may never have gotten Donovan Mitchell two years later without Lyles.
Even that doesn’t change the fact that the relationship ended badly once Utah traded him to Denver.
Cody Williams comes in at No. 10 in 2024, and the concern here is tied to how little he showed right away. He was another project, but his rookie season was the worst in Jazz history relative to expectations.
Projects usually flash something early; Williams did not. He did show a little more in Year 2, and his best month came as the 2025-26 season wound down, but there was no clear answer yet on whether that was real progress or just noise.
Utah didn’t wait to find out, and that puts him among the franchise’s biggest misses.
Dante Exum is second at No. 5 in 2014. For a while, “Exum Island” had real life with Jazz fans, because the talent and defensive upside were obvious.
The problem was health. He arrived as a defensively elite, offensively raw guard, but injuries kept showing up just when Utah needed him most.
Unlike Burke, Exum never even managed a real stretch of sustained good play in a Jazz uniform, only brief moments. That wasn’t his fault, but it still left Utah with one of its most frustrating lottery outcomes.
At No. 1 is Enes Freedom, the No. 3 pick in 2011. This isn’t about his more recent controversy with the WNBA.
It’s about what he was supposed to be for the Jazz. Utah landed him thanks to the Deron Williams trade, and he was one of the main reasons the team let Al Jefferson leave in free agency.
Freedom, then Enes Kanter, had the kind of post game that looked like the start of a franchise centerpiece. The defense, though, was a different story, and it was bad enough to drag everything down.
Rudy Gobert eventually solved that problem by taking over, but the bigger sting is what Utah might have had from that draft instead of Freedom, alongside Gobert and Gordon Hayward. Before the Jazz drafted Peterson, Freedom was their highest pick ever, tied with D-Will, and he was gone after just three-and-a-half years.
That’s a lot of opportunity wasted.
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