The Utah Jazz might not be done losing games. There’s a good chance that the 2025-26 season looks a lot like the 2024-25 season — a lot more losses, time spent on development for young players and aiming for a high lottery pick.
If that’s the case, then does 27-year-old Lauri Markkanen, the best player currently on the Jazz roster, want to be in Utah?
“Definitely,” he said. “I feel like what I did last summer with signing here, that kind of tells you the confidence I have in the organization and the guys we have. I love being in Utah. We’ll see what happens in summer, there’s things that you can’t control, but I love being here and working out with the guys that we have and building this thing.”
Markkanen has been pretty vocal about how much he, his wife and their three children have grown to love Utah over the last three years. And, when he signed his extension last summer, he did so with the understanding that it might take a while for the Jazz to build up a team that would be worthy of postseason play.
The deal Markkanen signed renegotiated an increase to his 2024-25 salary and gave him a $220 million four-year extension that will keep him under contract through the 2028-29 season. The timing of making that deal official was also key, in that it precluded the Jazz from trading Markkanen during the 2024-25 season.
It was one of the first times in many years that Markkanen has had a bit of a break from being included in trade rumors and hearing his name tossed around as he’s trying to play through a season. But those rumors will no doubt start to swirl again as the NBA offseason nears.
“I feel like this year was kind of a one-off, I’m used to it every year,” Markkanen said. “So I’m ready for it. It’s just a part of the business, and it can happen overnight like it did last time for me. You kind of learn to live with not worrying about ‘what if.’ As of right now, today, I’m here, and that’s how we’re living. If something’s changes, then we adjust. So, yeah, I’m ready for it. But it was nice to have a year off of it.”
Though Markkanen only played in 47 games this season, the Jazz’s injury report should be taken with a grain of salt — maybe many grains. The Jazz were fined by the league for resting healthy players and manipulated the injury report and rest was given to players at every turn in order to lose enough games to end the year with the worst record in the NBA.
The hope is that their tanking season will be rewarded with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft. But at the very least, they’ll be guaranteed a top-five pick.
Meanwhile, as the Jazz wait to find out their lottery fate, Markkanen expects to be fully healthy and ready to play for the Finnish national team this summer.
“We have a big summer with the national team, and I’m excited for that,” Markkanen said. “In previous years (playing for the national team) those are the years I’ve always felt the best, physically and mentally, to be honest. Because you’re getting game reps right before the NBA season starts. So that kind of gets me excited for the summer, for being able to play for your country, and then how that’s going to lead up into the NBA season.”
There’s no way to know now what will happen with Markkanen this offseason. If the Jazz front office is presented with a deal that they think makes more sense for the future than it does to keep Markkanen on the roster, then they’ll take it into serious consideration. But they don’t want for Markkanen to think that they are shopping him around.
“We’ll see when opportunities come up to add to the roster, but I see Lauri as a central part of what we’re doing, that’s why we signed him,” Jazz general manager Justin Zanik said. “We think he can be a huge piece for us as we join the competitive rings.”
