Eighteen months.
When Utah Jazz decision makers talk about when they expect Taylor Hendricks to be fully back to normal, the say 18 months post-surgery.
That’s not when they expect him to be good. That’s not when they expect him to realize his potential. That’s not when they expect to know if he can continue improving.
No. That’s when they expect Hendricks should be playing normal minutes, feeling like he can run and jump and block and dunk without any sort of trepidation and maybe getting back to the point he was at before the injury.
Hendricks underwent surgery to repair his broken leg in the first week of Nov. 2024. Eighteen months from that would be the first week of May 2026. To be clear, the Jazz expect Hendricks will be fully recovered and ready to play when the 2025-26 season begins. But they aren’t putting wild or unrealistic expectations on him for the upcoming season.
Even so, Hendricks’ recovery, return and potential are of major importance to the Jazz and their future. To say that much of the team’s hope depends on Hendricks would be a bit of an understatement.
Of other the young players currently on the Jazz roster — Walker Kessler, Keyonte George, Brice Sensabaugh, Cody Williams, Isaiah Collier, Kyle Filipowski — only Kessler has shown the Jazz that he has clear potential of being a starter.
The Jazz hope they’ll strike on someone in the 2025 draft who will be a future starter, and they have hopes that some of the young players on the roster will develop more and that someone could surprise them, but they can’t count on that.
What they really need is for Hendricks to pop.
Selected with the ninth overall pick in the 2023 draft, Hendricks was always going to be a bit of a longterm project for the Jazz. Coming out of UCF after his freshman season, he was as raw and green as rookies come. But his length, athleticism and natural defensive instincts along with an ability to shoot, made him a worthwhile prospect.
His rookie season was a struggle. He had a lot to learn and a long road ahead of him, but an offseason spent with NBA coaches and in an NBA weight room seemed to be turning things in the right direction.
In the first three games of the 2024-25 season, Hendricks looked stronger, more tuned into what was happening around him on the court and more ready for the big leagues than he did the previous year. The numbers don’t tell the story, but the progress was clear when watching him.
But during the third game, Hendricks suffered the brutal injury that kept him out the rest of the season. Jazz brass have often wondered what Hendricks’ second NBA season could have been if he’d not been injured, if he would have had a sort of breakout year.
Now, the clock has to rewind. For all intents and purposes, the 2025-26 season will be treated as Hendricks’ second NBA season, but with the understanding that it might take him a year to get his feet under him and get back to where he was.
Beyond that, the Jazz are hoping Hendricks can prove to be the athletic 3-and-D lightning rod they’ll need as they look toward the future. They’re hoping he can be the prospect from the 2023 and 2024 draft pool that turns into a starter that can help lead them once the rebuild is over.
Frankly, they need him to be.
