Ainge plans to go ‘big game hunting’ for Jazz this summer
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 Sports) – Coming off its worst season in ten years, the Utah Jazz have a lot of work to do this off-season to improve the team.
But Utah does have the flexibility to get much better this summer. They have roughly $40 million in cap space and a slew of future round picks, including two this year. That should be enough to bring him some established NBA players to join a young corps.
“We’re going all in this summer to try to figure out what we can do to get better,” said Jazz CEO Danny Ainge. “Our plan is not to come to training camp with six kids under 20 years old. Our objective is to find a player or two, and we’re we’re ready to roll. We’re ready to go big game hunting.”
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The main objective has to be to sign leading scorer Lauri Markkanen to an extension before he becomes a free agent at the end of the 2024-25 season.
“I think it’s pretty clear that Lauri Markkanen is a very good player,” Ainge said. “We love him, and yeah, we’d like to have him around.”
Jordan Clarkson is the oldest player on the Jazz roster and could be used as an asset to bring in a younger player, or he could stay and help develop the young talent on the roster.
“I think he can be a big help if we improve our team this year,” Ainge said about Clarkson. “As we’ve seen, he’s a really good player. He can score off the bench. He knows how to play, and he’s been a fantastic player for the Jazz. We hope that he continues to be.”
Perhaps the biggest reason the Jazz lost 20 of its last 25 games was because they went very young as rookies Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks and Brice Sensabaugh all gained valuable playing time.
“You want to give them a role that they can handle,” said Jazz head coach Will Hardy, who went 31-51 this season. “I think that there were moments where they were probably getting too much. That’s just kind of the situation that we were in. That’s not their fault, it’s not anybody’s fault.”
“I thought Keyonte had a very good year,” said Ainge. “He had some ups and downs. I’m still not sure he’s a franchise point guard. I think Taylor is just a little further behind than Keyonte. As you saw, his shooting was getting better and better. Brice has a good feel for the game. He’s got a better knack of scoring.”
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The Jazz are slated to pick eighth in the NBA Draft, although that could change in the NBA Lottery on May 12. However, this isn’t considered to be a strong draft class.
“It’s harder to find franchise-altering players in this draft than some other drafts,” Ainge said. “But I do believe we’ll be able to find some good players in this draft.”
But despite all the losing down the stretch, there hasn’t been any panic in sticking with the long term plan.
“I have the utmost confidence in our entire organization,” Hardy said. “Because even though we had some tough times at the end of the year, I didn’t see any behavior internally that was alarming.”
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