Utah Jazz are an embarrassment

I distinctly remember the 2022-23 Utah Jazz, the first season for current Head Coach Will Hardy, starting out the season 10-3, with Lauri Markkanen and Jordan Clarkson leading the recently blown-up roster that, for the first time in half a decade, did not feature Donovan Mitchell or Rudy Gobert. There were conversations in NBA media — on podcasts, in blogs, in my college dining hall (NBA media is everywhere) — about if the Jazz would be able to tank properly, as they clearly had planned to coming into the season. Maybe Hardy was just too good a coach; maybe this would be a mid-2010s Celtics situation with Brad Stevens and that weird Jeff Green and Avery Bradley team, when it became clear that they had to compete because tanking was just off the table. Danny Ainge ran that team, and Danny Ainge runs this team. It was all lining up.

Nope! They figured out how to tank just fine. Hardy got his ducks in a row, and successfully tanked not just for the rest of 2022-23, but for 2024, 2025 and 2026, making the Jazz, by my calculation, the only team other than The Process 76ers that has unapologetically tanked for four consecutive seasons. And they get one-fifth the hate they deserve for it.

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But they might be getting all the karma. The 2026-27 Jazz have kicked off their first USDA-certified “not tanking” campaign by going 1-11 in their first 12 games. Their single win was a one-point home victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, a disasterclass in their own right, and have since ripped off 10 straight losses despite finally putting out a roster that looks like it could do something other than intentionally lose.

Maybe they’re just tanking again. Maybe Will Hardy, who coached zero winning seasons on his first contract but still signed a contract extension through 2031, will coach through all nine years of both contracts and maintain his illustrious .326 career winning percentage. Has all this tanking been for nothing? Has all this glorious “development” wrought by a half-decade so disgusting that the NBA had to change its lottery rules resulted in … this? Is the team really just injured? Are they actually…

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Publish date : 2026-11-12 15:10:00

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