The Jazz have been chasing this kind of player for a while.
When Utah swung the deal for Jaren Jackson Jr., it felt like the front office finally landed the stretch big it had been hunting since at least 2023 - a rim-protecting, shot-making frontcourt piece whose value shows up on both ends. The Jazz have brought in better players than Jackson in other contexts, but few trade targets came with the same kind of résumé he had before arriving in Utah.
Back in 2023, the Jazz still didn’t have a clear lane. They missed the playoffs, but Lauri Markkanen’s unexpected breakout kept them from sinking to the bottom of the standings. That pushed them toward a win-now approach, or at least an attempt at one.
Their first big swing was Kristaps Porzingis. Utah wanted the well-known stretch big and rim protector after his breakout season in Washington, and there’s a good chance they would have landed him in free agency if Boston hadn’t jumped in with a trade first. Porzingis then became a major part of the Celtics’ run to Banner 18, which only made Utah’s target look smarter in hindsight.
Jackson isn’t Porzingis, but the overlap is obvious. Both are big men who can stretch the floor, create their own shot, and change games at the rim.
Both can tilt matchups just by being on the floor. And both come with some questions around durability, though Porzingis has had the bigger issue there.
When Porzingis didn’t happen, Utah pivoted to John Collin instead. That move didn’t exactly hit the ground running.
It was a mess at first, then settled into something better, if not exactly ideal. It was a reminder that finding the right stretch big is easier said than done.
With Jackson, Utah got a quicker answer.
He only appeared in three games before choosing season-ending surgery, but the fit was still obvious almost immediately. Utah was competitive in one of those games despite its heavy tanking effort, enough to get fined by the NBA for breaking an unwritten rule. Even in that tiny sample, the logic of the move was hard to miss.
The appeal is the same one that made Porzingis so valuable in Boston: players like this create problems everywhere. They can punish opponents offensively and still erase mistakes defensively. Utah may not need Jackson to score as much as he did in Memphis, but with Lauri Markkanen, Keyonte George, and Darryn Peterson around him, the Jazz can put him in the kind of spots where he can do damage.
Golden State’s own pursuit of Jackson ended with the Warriors turning to Porzingis, which says plenty about how teams view these two. The similarities are real, and so is the impact they can have for a team trying to win.
Utah finally got the guy it had been after. It just took a few years longer than the Jazz probably wanted.
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Jazz Still Have One Obvious Hole In Their New Center Rotation
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That is why Brook Lopez keeps coming up in the conversation as a possible addition. He would give Utah the kind of floor spacing and interior defense that fits a modern frontcourt, but even he would not fully cover every part of the Kessler loss, especially on the glass. With the Clippers weighing ways to reshape their roster and potentially chase draft capital, Lopez sits in the middle of a situation that could affect more than one team before Utahs frontcourt picture is settled. [Read more 🡒]