Lauri Markkanen rumor Q&A: Why would the Jazz consider trading their best player, when, and to who?

What’s the deal with the Lauri Markkanen rumors you’ve been hearing about?

It’s certainly been a quieter summer than Utah Jazz fans expected — and the front office indicated — it would be. Only backup center Drew Eubanks has been signed to a minor deal, only Kris Dunn has departed. In most ways, the Jazz are the same team that struggled through the season’s final two months.

Trading Lauri Markkanen, though, would change all of that. It would easily be the franchise’s boldest move since trading Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert two summers ago. It would also make them significantly worse at basketball.

Let’s break it down for everyone.

Why would the Jazz consider trading their best player?

In short, in hopes they can get a better one.

Lauri Markkanen is an incredibly good basketball player: Depending on how you rate him, he stands anywhere between the league’s 15 and 30 best players. His ability to score at all three levels at great volume and efficiency has contributed 20 or so wins to the Jazz’s totals over the past couple of years. He’s terrific.

Even better, he wants to stay in Utah. Markkanen truly enjoys living here, with a young family that fits well in Utah’s lifestyle and a climate he embraces.

But Markkanen isn’t a top-10 player. It’s really hard to win significantly in the NBA without one of those. Worse, the Jazz don’t have an obvious way to get one. It’s not going to happen via free agency, and trading for one has proven impossible so far. It is certainly possible to get an elite player later in the draft, but it’s significantly less likely.

This upcoming draft, though, has five potential franchise players — including Duke’s Cooper Flagg, who already has impressed at Team USA scrimmages by competing against and holding his own against the world’s best basketball players at age 17. Tanking to get Flagg or another elite building block may make the most sense.

It’s certainly risky, though. The best outcome would be to pair Markkanen with that elite franchise player. It’s just hard to know if they could get one any time soon with him winning some, but not enough, games for the Jazz this year.

What would the Jazz want in a Markkanen deal?

By all accounts, a lot. They would be looking for high-value draft assets and young players they can build the team around moving forward, and would hope for a return matching or besting what the Brooklyn Nets got for Mikal Bridges a few weeks ago.

How would an extension impact the Jazz’s cap?

But the Jazz don’t have to trade Markkanen. Their other critical option: to renegotiate and extend his contract to keep him for the foreseeable future.

Right now, Markkanen has only one year remaining on his contract that will pay him $18 million for the 2024-25 season. After that, he’d normally become an unrestricted free agent.

Because Markkanen is both a very good player and a positive trade asset, they wouldn’t want to lose him for nothing in free agency. So the Jazz want to extend that deal, and luckily, Markkanen is interested in staying.

For teams over the cap, they can only do this by offering up to 140% of a player’s current salary by NBA rule. For Markkanen, that’d be $25 million per year — still not what he’s worth on the open market.

But because the Jazz are under the cap by a whopping $34 million, they can use that cap space to re-negotiate what Markkanen will make this year, and give him up to $42 million this season. That would be the $18 million he makes now, plus an additional $24 million of the Jazz’s cap room. The extension would then come after that, making Markkanen a maximum of $209 million over the course of four additional years. The Jazz would pay additional money now in exchange for contract security later.

That’s a lot of money, but Markkanen and the Jazz will likely agree to something just under that, giving the Jazz $10 million to $20 million of cap space to work with after the renegotiation and extension. (The Jazz would also like to reach the NBA’s salary floor, which requires them to have at most $14 million of cap space going into the year.)

It’s worth noting that extending Markkanen also limits the Jazz’s cap space in the summer of 2025, too. The Jazz have no significant contracts expiring after the 2024-25 season to open up room.

What are the important dates to consider?

The Jazz can’t sign Markkanen to this extension until Aug. 6. That’s — sort of — the three-year anniversary of the date Markkanen signed his current contract.

Why “sort of?” Well, the date Markkanen’s extension was announced to the world was Aug. 27, 2021; that’s when we heard about the Chicago Bulls sign and trading him to the Cavaliers. But it turns out that Markkanen’s extension date on his paperwork is Aug. 6, 2021, and the sign-and-trade just took a long time to work out between the clubs. This detail, admittedly, is only interesting to extreme nerds.

But moving that date three weeks earlier is significant. After Markkanen signed an extension, he’d become untradable for exactly six months. Coincidentally, six months after Aug. 6 is Feb. 6 — which happens to be the NBA trade deadline.

So if Markkanen were to sign his extension on the very first day he is eligible to, he could still be traded on NBA trade deadline day itself. If he were to sign it on the second day he is eligible to, or thereafter, it would guarantee he’s a Jazzman for the entirety of the 2024-25 season.

That’s something important to watch, then: Do Markkanen and the Jazz sign the extension at the very first opportunity, maximizing the team’s flexibility? Or do they sign it later, ensuring he stays longer?

By the way, this wrinkle was first reported by Marc Stein on his The Stein Line Substack.

What can other teams offer?

So far, the teams who have been rumored as interested in Markkanen are the Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Miami Heat, New Orleans Pelicans, and the Minnesota Timberwolves. It’s a lengthy list, as Markkanen is maybe the easiest plug-and-play star in the NBA.

There’s been the most chatter around the Warriors, but they have significant limitations. First, they’ve traded a 2030 top-20 protected first-round pick to the Washington Wizards, which prevents them from trading their 2029 or 2031 picks via the NBA’s Stepien rule, which prohibits teams from trading picks in consecutive years. As a result, the Warriors can only trade two of their first-round picks from 2025-2028 to the Jazz; they could potentially offer the 1-20 outcomes on the 2030 pick as well.

Second, the Warriors likely wouldn’t be able to trade for Markkanen after his extension thanks to their salary structure; doing so would force the Jazz to take on Draymond Green or Andrew Wiggins’ contracts, neither of which they’ll want to do.

So the Warriors’ best possible offer is something like Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski, two first-round picks, a third protected pick, and some pick swaps for Markkanen, done in the next few weeks. It’s a strong offer, but not a surefire yes from the Jazz’s front office.

The Kings are probably the team with the second-most smoke — which was heavier before they acquired DeMar DeRozan from Chicago. Still, Kings reporter James Ham indicated that the team was still looking for a scoring forward to put alongside their core trio, including Markkanen. Third-year shooter Keegan Murray would be an interesting building block, and the Kings have nearly all of their future picks available for trade.

The Pelicans still have their future draft picks available for trade as well, along with a cast of young players who probably top out as role players, like Herb Jones, Trey Murphy, and Jordan Hawkins.

The Spurs might be the most asset-rich suitor: They still have all of their own picks, plus additional firsts from Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte (protected), and Dallas. They also have interesting young players like Devin Vassell and Stephon Castle. Unfortunately, the risk of trading Markkanen to the Spurs is, because they’re so well positioned, that the Wembanyama/Markkanen combination becomes an unbeatable Western Conference foe for a decade, limiting the Jazz even after a rebuild.

It’s interesting that the Timberwolves are rumored to be interested (according to HoopsHype), as they’ve already traded nearly their entire draft asset closet to the Jazz. Jaden McDaniels and Rob Dillingham would be the starting point, but then what? It doesn’t seem like enough. The Heat have similar problems because they’ve already traded their picks away in 2025 and

2027; they could only trade the Jazz their 2029 and 2031 picks. Jaime Jaquez is a nice young player, but his potential falls short of a future star, in my opinion.