Jazz offseason priorities: Draft lottery, draft, free agents, role players

Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy talks with center Walker Kessler (24) during an NBA basketball game against the Minnesota Timberwolves held at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. | Isaac Hale, Deseret News

The Utah Jazz are going into the offseason with a pretty clear plan for the first time in a long time. They don’t need to protect anymore draft picks, they don’t need to offload aging talent and they don’t need to prepare for another tanking season.

In the 2026-27 season, the goal is to win. So, the summer plans are pretty clear. Make it through the draft lottery and draft night — preferably with a high pick that can flourish for years in Utah — resolve free agency questions, and look for potential opportunities to add role players through trade or on the free agent market.

“We’ve got a lot to prove,” Jazz president of basketball operations Austin Ainge said on Monday morning. “We’ve got a big summer ahead of us — our players and our front office. Players have to get a lot better and continue to work, and our front office, we have some key free agents and a lot of other things to do to finish out our roster to know where we stand."

The key free agents for the Jazz will be Jusuf Nurkić and Kevin Love. Both want to be back in Utah, but the price will likely be the decider. There’s also Walker Kessler, who will enter restricted free agency.

The Jazz would prefer to quickly resolve the Kessler situation and re-sign him so that they can solidify something at the center position before other decisions need to be made. But, no matter what, it means that the front court will have some serious attention paid as the offseason begins to unfold.

Additionally the Jazz are going to be looking for players that will add to their expected core of Lauri Markkanen, Jaren Jackson Jr., Keyonte George, Kessler and Ace Bailey.

“We made a big move with Jaren and we started this season with potentially a lot of cap space this summer,” Ainge said. “Jaren was kind of our big move. So I would say we’ll always be aggressive, looking to improve the team. But, unless amazing opportunities present themselves, we don’t have tons of cap space. It’ll be more additive players.”

Throughout the entirety of the offseason — from the draft lottery to the opening of training camp — the Jazz are looking for players that will fit the current mold of what it means to be a Jazz player.

The Jazz front office, along with head coach Will Hardy, is trying to find versatile players that aren’t demanding of touches or usage, who will play unselfishly.

“We want guys that aren’t about themselves, that are about the group, that will play winning basketball and accept coaching,” Ainge said. “Play the right way and act the right way would be the shortest way to say it. I feel like we have a very good base of that. It’ll be a big summer project to finish out this team in a way that we can add on both of those, on and off the court.”

The summer project starts now.

Austin Ainge, president of basketball operations, speaks during the Utah Jazz media day at the Zions Bank Basketball Campus in Salt Lake City on Monday, Sept. 29, 2025. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News