The worst decision the Utah Jazz have made in the last 5 years

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This week, ESPN writer Zach Kram wrote an article entitled “All 30 NBA teams’ biggest roster mistakes since 2020.” In the article, he posits that the Utah Jazz’s biggest mistake of the last five years was not trading Lauri Markkanen.

“The problem is he had much more trade value two years ago, after he broke out and won Most Improved Player, than he does now after signing a big new contract and declining from his short-lived All-Star level,” Kram wrote. “Markkanen averaged 26 points per game on 50% shooting in 2022-23 but fell to 19 points on 42% shooting last season.”

I can certainly understand this opinion from an outside perspective, and we may not know whether keeping Markkanen was a good idea for many years. There’s merit to Kram’s argument. But, I would argue that there is another move that ranks as the Jazz’s worst decision in the last five years.

In 2020 the Jazz selected Udoka Azubuike with the 27th pick of the draft. That pick alone turned out to be a terrible decision, but within 48 hours of picking Azubuike the Jazz also tried to bolster their front court by signing Derrick Favors — his second time with the team — to a three-year deal worth $27 million, which would account for the entirety of the team’s mid-level exception.

Azubuike was a bust and Favors was not the boon the Jazz hoped he’d be, and in order to dump his contract the next year, the Jazz had to attach a first-round pick to deal him to the Oklahoma City Thunder. That first-rounder has been a cloud that has hung over the Jazz throughout the entirety of this rebuild.

The pick sent to the Thunder was top-10 protected in 2024. Since it didn’t convey, it was top-10 protected in 2025. Since the Jazz managed to keep their pick in 2025, it is now top-eight protected in 2026. Only if it doesn’t convey after 2026 does the obligation extinguish.

If the Jazz decide to move off Markkanen this year or in the future, I’m confident that executives around the league can see his declining numbers for what they are — a half truth. Had Markkanen been playing to win the last couple of years, if he had been surrounded by good or great players, if he wasn’t experimenting with his own game and if he wasn’t the sole focus of a defense, then he’d be playing a lot better.

But because of the decisions to select Azubuike and sign Favors, the Jazz have been handcuffed by owing a first-rounder to a Western Conference foe on the rise. If they had selected someone else in 2020 and used the MLE on a player that wasn’t on their way into retirement, they might have been able to make a deeper run prior to the rebuild.

After trading away Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, they might have been able to make different decisions about players around Markkanen. They might have actually let the 2022-23 season play out without manipulating playing time and availability of players in order to bottom out in the second half of the season. They would have been able to do the same thing the following year.

Instead, they’ve been stuck, knowing that they would have to surrender a good pick to an already good team in their conference if they did anything other than lose. And are still paying for those decisions today.

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