A Team In Need Of The Real Kyle Filipowski

Monday, October 26th was a disastrous day for Utah Jazz big men. Before gametime, Jaxson Hayes was ruled out due to right shoulder soreness. In the first quarter, Lauri Markkanen suffered a nasty wrist injury on his shooting hand, and he staggered back towards the locker room. Not too long after that, Jaren Jackson Jr. sustained a right knee injury after Ty Jerome stumbled into his leg – if the tweet found below correctly reads coach Hardy’s lips, this could keep Trip out for a long time.

So, with 4 separate 7 footers now riding the bench with injury (Nurkic was looking classy as usual), where does the coaching staff turn for big man production? Surely, surely this would be the time for Kyle Filipowski, 3 year Jazzman with thousands of prime developmental minutes under his belt, to step up and show that all of the priority placed on his improvement since the 2024 draft was wisely spent. This would be that magical moment where Flip proves to all that his stats were not empty and his skills not gimmicky. In the face of necessity, Filipowski stands ready.

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Instead, this quickly became the Mo Bamba game. And it was fun! He blocked shots, ran the court hard, and climbed Mount Edey in a way I’ve never before seen. Our defense was struggling, so I get it – Hardy wanted an anchor down low, and Bamba fits that archetype better than Filipowski does. However, Bamba was not the only bench big to get the call-up in the second half; Tony Bradley also reacquainted himself with Jazz fans, to the tune of one of the worst 5 minute stretches of basketball I can remember.

Ultimately, in a game where the Jazz were lacking some serious size in the frontcourt, Kyle Filipowski only played 8 minutes. Last season, he started half of the season’s games, and played nearly half of the 48 minutes of each game. And he showed us something! He was a really solid defensive rebounder, and his passing from the top-of-the-key was the perfect fit for Hardy’s offense. Of the bench youngsters at the end of last season (Collier, Flip, Cody, and Brice), Filipowski was the one that I was most confident would be a winning NBA player in our…

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Publish date : 2026-10-27 12:01:00

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