The NBA’s window for negotiating with free agents opens today at 4 p.m. MST, and new deals can’t be signed until July 6. But, as always, that hasn’t stopped deals from already being agreed upon and reported.
The Utah Jazz are among the teams having already come to terms with one of their free agents — Jusuf Nurkić — which begins to address their most prominent area of need.
Walker Kessler and center depth
The Jazz’s president of basketball operations, Austin Ainge, made it pretty clear on Saturday what the team’s biggest priority is as free agency opens.
“Obviously, we don’t have any centers under contract right now,” Ainge said. “So that will be one area, for sure, we’ll work on.”
And the glaring, 7-foot elephant in the room is Walker Kessler, who is officially a restricted free agent.
The Jazz made an offer to Kessler earlier in the offseason for a five-year, $140 million deal, which his representatives rejected.
According to league sources, this is pretty much what everyone involved expected would happen — the Jazz would put out a number, Kessler’s people would say no, he would hit restricted free agency, see what other offers would look like, and then more detailed negotiations would happen.
Kessler’s agent, Aaron Mintz of CAA, is expected to meet with teams beginning on Tuesday to discuss interest in the center.
The Jazz will be able to match any offer sheet from another team if they want to. But, if an agreement is not reached between the Jazz and Kessler, he can sign a one-year, $7.1 million qualifying offer from the Jazz and then would be an unrestricted free agent in 2027.
Even so, no matter what was going to happen with the Kessler situation, the Jazz needed to have more depth at center. They either needed a reliable backup for Kessler, or a reasonable player to plug in in the event that Kessler ends up on a different team this season.
That’s why the Jazz were quick to come to a deal with Nurkic and make sure they had those ducks in a row before the free agency frenzy began.
It still wouldn’t be a bad idea to have another player on the roster who could play the five, so the Jazz might not be done filling out the depth at center. But outside of the center position, the Jazz have a pretty easy playbook to follow when scouring for free agents.
Defensive wing
The heading pretty much says it all. If the Jazz aren’t working to resolve Kessler’s restricted free agency or increasing the depth of their center rotation, they’ll be on the hunt for lengthy wings who can increase the team’s defensive profile.
The Jazz have been one of the worst defensive teams in the league for years and as they look toward a 2026-27 season where they’ll be striving for wins for the first time since the rebuild began in 2022, they want to grow on that side of the ball.
But it should be noted that the Jazz are going to want defense on the perimeter without sacrificing on the offensive end, so they’ll be looking for players that can come in off the bench and play both sides.