The Lakers have spent the summer collecting familiar names from Utah, and that gives Walker Kessler and Collin Sexton a fresh kind of opportunity in Los Angeles. For both players, the move comes with a simple twist: they finally get a real shot to compete for something.
That was never the case with the Jazz. Kessler and Sexton were productive players, but they spent their time in Utah on teams that never seriously threatened to matter in the standings.
Their individual play wasn’t the issue. The bigger picture kept sliding toward a rebuild, year by year, while they were there.
Now they’re in a different setup entirely. The Lakers are putting them around players like Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, which changes the job description completely. Whether it all works is still to be determined, but at least their minutes and production are tied to a team trying to do more than simply develop in place.
Utah’s front office brought both players in to see if they could fit into long-term playoff plans, and the answer eventually became no. Los Angeles, clearly, sees it differently. That alone gives Kessler and Sexton the kind of chance they never really had before.
There’s still a little regret in the way it played out for Utah. When the Jazz blew things up in 2022, it wasn’t obvious right away that the team was headed straight into a tank.
Lauri Markkanen and Will Hardy outperformed expectations, and Utah even tried to add more talent, making runs at Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday. Those moves didn’t land, and the direction shifted.
If the Jazz had built something stronger around that group, Kessler’s and Sexton’s place in franchise history might look very different. Both showed what they could do, but on weak teams, their work never got the kind of credit it might have deserved.
Still, Utah’s reset has produced a roster that looks far more intriguing now than it did before. The Jazz have Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr., along with young additions like Ace Bailey and Darryn Peterson.
So Kessler and Sexton are moving on from a stretch of Jazz basketball that feels like a closed chapter. In Los Angeles, they finally get the kind of stage they didn’t have in Utah.
In Other News...
Jazz Just Turned A Core Piece Into A Massive Future Haul
The Jazz just turned a familiar frontcourt piece into a much bigger long-term asset stash, completing a sign-and-trade that reshapes the next phase of their roster building. Walker Kessler had become one of the more important young bigs in Utahs mix, but the team clearly saw an opportunity to convert that value into future flexibility rather than lock into a more expensive path.
Los Angeles made the push because it wanted a starting-level center to pair with Luka Doncic, and it had the draft capital to be aggressive after the earlier Doncic deal left the Lakers in a stronger position to spend. For Utah, the move is less about what Kessler was today than what those future picks and swaps can become, especially if the front office keeps leaning into a patient reset. [Read more 🡒]