Taylor Hendricks has become the easiest former Jazz player to pull for, and the reason goes well beyond basketball.
When Utah tore things down in 2022, fans could still comfortably cheer for the guys who had helped build the playoff teams. Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, Mike Conley Jr., Joe Ingles, Bojan Bogdanovic and even Jordan Clarkson all fit into that strange middle ground: beloved ex-Jazzmen who weren’t standing in the way of the tank.
That’s not the case anymore. Utah’s direction has flipped, and the mindset around its old players has flipped with it.
The Jazz now want wins, not losses, which changes the calculus on every former face still hanging around the league. Anyone on a contender becomes the enemy.
Anyone elsewhere, and especially anyone with a story worth rooting for, becomes easier to embrace.
Hendricks checks that box.
Now with the Memphis Grizzlies, the former Jazz lottery pick was already an easy player to pull for before the trade. Then came the awful leg injury early in his sophomore year, the kind of setback that can wreck the path of a young player whose value is built on upside and raw talent.
That injury matters here. So does the fact that Memphis is a better landing spot for him right now.
And so does the reality that the Grizzlies probably won’t be getting in Utah’s way any time soon. Put it together, and Hendricks stands out as the most rootable ex-Jazzman on the board.
There’s also a basketball reason the fresh start matters. Had he stayed in Utah, Hendricks probably wouldn’t have seen the same runway.
The injury was part of that, but so was the crowd of big men already in the Jazz rotation. Memphis gives him a chance he likely wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and after everything he’s been through, that feels earned.
And before long, he started showing why Utah was so intrigued in the first place.
After the JJJ trade, Hendricks began putting up real numbers, including a career-high 10.3 points per game while shooting 46.3% from the field and 34.2% from three on 8.7 shot attempts a night. It didn’t happen all at once, but the flashes were there. The player the Jazz imagined when they took him No. 9 overall in 2023 started to peek through.
The Grizzlies’ exact plan this season is tough to pin down, but they’re set up to handle a lot of different outcomes. That gives Hendricks room to stretch his game and see how far it can go. He may not be on a straight path to becoming a perennial All-Star, but there’s enough here to think he can be a difference-maker.
If that happens, Utah will have its answer. And for a fan base that once had to cheer for Mitchell and Gobert from afar, Hendricks is the kind of former Jazz player worth staying attached to - even if that window may not stay open for long.
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