As the Utah Jazz turn the page on the 2023-24 NBA season and prepare for what’s next, one of the many things they are planning for is NBA Summer League.
On Tuesday, Jazz CEO Danny Ainge said the team is planning on having a pretty stacked Summer League roster that will include Walker Kessler, Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, Brice Sensabaugh, Jason Preston, Kenneth Lofton Jr. and Darius Bazley.
The Jazz also have two-way players whose futures are undecided who could be on the team, as well as any incoming prospects selected in the 2024 draft.
The biggest surprise here is Kessler, who had an impressive rookie campaign in the 2022-23 season that was followed by an invite to Team USA last summer.
Though Kessler said the Team USA experience was a good one overall, he didn’t play very much and then struggled at times during his second NBA season and has admitted to at times not reacting in the most positive way to some adversity.
“He probably overachieved in his first year,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. “Then this year he felt like he didn’t play his best for a variety of reasons, so that makes it feel different.
“It’s like being .500. If you win the first two and lose the second two, you feel bad. If you lose the first two and you win the second two, you feel good. You’re still .500, so I like where Walker is at in terms of his progress over the first two years of his career.”
With the addition of John Collins to the Jazz roster, Kessler had to navigate finding new ways to be effective when sharing the court with his new teammate and found himself coming off the bench more often than he had anticipated after earning the starting center role at the end of his rookie year.
Kessler did not play in Summer League in 2022 due to a minor injury and then was with Team USA last summer, so this will be the first time he is able to get in non-regular season minutes.
“Walker needs to play as much as possible,” Hardy said. “There’s nothing that will substitute getting live game reps ... If you had told me when we traded for Walker two years ago that this is the point on the map that he would be two years in, I would have been happy.”
With the other players, the Jazz recognize the same need for continued growth and are continuously trying to figure out who could be a part of the team’s major future plans, as well as who could earn a spot on the 2024-25 roster to prove that they are worth a more in-depth investment.
Bazley and Lofton are on three-year non-guaranteed deals with the Jazz, which gives the team full control through the summer and training camp while also giving them the flexibility to terminate the contracts if they want to move on to get a better look at other players.
Salt Lake City Summer League will take place on July 8, 9 and 10, featuring the Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies, Philadelphia 76ers and Oklahoma City Thunder. Las Vegas Summer League, featuring all 30 NBA teams, will be held from July 12 through July 22.