Last Friday, Craig Bollerjack of Sportsnet Rocky Mountain and play by play voice of the Utah Jazz called in to the SVI studio to talk to Duke and Aaron about the Jazz season in 2022/2023 and looking ahead into the offseason. Part of the off-season for the Utah Jazz coming up is their massive cap space situation and 15 draft picks in the coming draft, the near-ideal scenario to be in for any rebuilding franchise.
The Jazz were still alive in the play-in race just ever so barely at the time of the interview but were quickly eliminated shortly after via a loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder but did show a lot of fight right up until the end with a squad that was widely considered by most to be a rebuild squad. The Jazz traded away a pair of all-stars during the offseason last year which really dulled potential interest at least in the minds of some in the team until the season got under way and the Jazz showed an incredible amount of grit and fight and kept themselves in the playoff conversation until the end of the year.
Bollerjack himself feels like the wins were important for the young team’s culture moving forward as well, while some fans may have preferred the team to full blown tank for draft capital, Bollerjack has a different point of view believing that by showing such fight in the first year of the rebuild sent a message to a lot of the rookies and young up and comers on the roster that the building blocks could be in place already to build a successful team moving forward. Not only is the. current roster filled with youth, but as previously mentioned the team also has a plethora of draft picks at it’s disposal heading into the summer and Bollerjack believes with a top 7-9 pick and so many picks behind them a trade up in the 1st round could very well be in play for the Jazz.
One other stories flying around the team is Lauri Markkanen heading back home to Finland over the offseason to fulfill his country-mandated military service which could add intrigue to the young blossoming star’s offseason program as many wonder how this may affect his ability to keep up with his basketball related preparation. Bollerjack believes though that it will have minimal effect if not even a potentially positive effect with the discipline and work-ethic that military service can instill in a young man and the Finnish government has already informed Markkanen that he will be able to complete his service with plenty of time remaining in his offseason to make sure he gets his season prep in.
You can catch the full interview below:
