The Utah Jazz need to draft a player that gives the fanbase some hope

Recently I had a sports talk radio host ask me if there was anyone on the Utah Jazz roster who was a guaranteed part of the future. If a Jazz fan was going to buy a jersey with a name on the back, is there a player on the roster who they could depend on to be a part of the next great Jazz team?

My answer was simple — No.

Through all of my reporting, and speaking with sources within the Jazz and throughout the NBA, it remains true that the Jazz would love to have Lauri Markkanen and Walker Kessler be a part of whatever they are striving to build. But they aren’t guaranteed to be on the roster when the Jazz are ready to start competing in a real way. And so far, the Jazz haven’t landed any players through the draft that are clearly and obviously going to be here long term.

Those kinds of players, the ones that will endear themselves to Jazz fans and will be a cornerstone of the franchise’s next great era, have yet to be defined. Down the road, some of those players could come to the Jazz via trade. But it is critical that the Jazz draft a player that can bring the fanbase some hope.

The Jazz have drafted Taylor Hendricks, Keyonte George, Brice Sensabaugh, Cody Williams, Isaiah Collier and Kyle Filipowski during this rebuild, and none of them have stood out as the kind of player who can serve as a foundational building block.

Of course, more time is needed to be certain about their future potential, especially when it comes to Hendricks and Williams. But as the Jazz enter the fourth year of a rebuild — the third year of drafting young players and sifting through to find a diamond in the rough — the fanbase is starting to grow weary of the uncertainty.

If the Jazz swing and miss in this draft, and none of the other young players on the roster end up being players that can actually add high-level value to a future team, then hanging on to Markkanen and Kessler will start to seem like futile decisions.

Cooper Flagg will be the No. 1 overall pick and is the closest to a sure thing that there is in the 2025 NBA Draft. Which means that every other pick comes with a great amount of risk.

There’s no guarantee that Dylan Harper, the expected No. 2 pick headed to the San Antonio Spurs, is going to amount to greatness, but the Spurs already have Victor Wembanyama. There are no guarantees about Tre Johnson, Ace Bailey, VJ Edgecombe, Jeremiah Fears, Kon Knueppel or any of the other players expected to be selected in the top-10 of this years draft.

So, there’s risk in any decision that the Jazz make.

This can go one of two ways:

1. The Jazz miss again. The players they pick this year, including the No. 5 overall pick doesn’t pan out, putting huge pressure on Hendricks and Williams to develop into players that defy expectations. When we look back, this could mean three straight years of whiffs in the draft and not much to show for it.
2. The Jazz could finally find a player whose name on a jersey will mean something to the fans. They could draft a player who will finally stand out in the crowd.

That second path is the one the Jazz desperately need. It’s the one that the fans deserve. This rebuild toward contention is not expected to be completed overnight. The newly crowned NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder needed six years to complete their ascent up the NBA mountain.

The Jazz’s journey could be longer, but in order to have any hope of the journey trending in the right direction they need to draft a young player who can help push them forward.