Lauri Markkanen is worrying. And he should.
The Utah Jazz’s best player addressed at the start of preseason camp not just a question, but the question, the most important question for him and for the Jazz, for the entire organization, heading into the 2024-25 campaign. It’s a vexing question, one filled with complexities and complications, convolutions and contradictions. A question that centers on a stretch during which Jazz managers Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik, if not coach Will Hardy, are dialed in, first and foremost, on the development of young players on a young team, a team featuring seven players who are 23 years old or younger.
In so many words, it is this: How will he, an established standout NBA player, deal with competing on a team whose No. 1 priority at present is growing the young’uns, not winning? Sure, it will win if it can, but that is a pressing concern for coming years, not this one. And losing, too, has its benefits, what with a deep draft highlighted by Cooper Flagg and also others on the horizon.
“You accept it,” Markkanen said, which was backed by the fact he took his money where his mouth is, signing a huge deal with the Jazz in the offseason. “We’re obviously going to see what we have.”
He, more than anyone, will enjoy/suffer with the clearest view and feel the deepest competitive cuts of that discovery. The forward, who averaged better than 23 points and eight rebounds last season, will go ahead and receive his hundreds of thousands of dollars for every hour of every game on the court. Most NBA veterans can tell you how hard the drag of losing pulls on their mental wellness and well being, night after night after night of a six-month NBA regular season. Yeah, the money is great, but the losing sucks what helped get them where they are — competitive fire — out of their souls.
“I don’t think there’s a player in the NBA that goes in being OK with just to see how it goes,” Markkanen said. “Everybody’s competitive. When you go out there, you’re trying to win.”
And if you don’t win on the reg? That, after all, is the fate most NBA observers are expecting for the Jazz, and quietly what Jazz management is expecting, as well. They don’t come right out and say it all plain, that they will or want to lose, but when the word development is tossed around the way Ainge and Zanik toss it, you can read another D-word in its place — defeat.
Jazz owner Ryan Smith pointed out the other day that many NBA teams are “homegrown,” suggesting that that’s what the Jazz will rely on for themselves, too, en route to what they claim is their goal — to win a championship. But the good teams, the contenders, are more than just that. They are sprinkled with stars, or seedlings with enough talent that they can blossom into stars, or be lesser complements to stellar players acquired through other means, to rise to the top of the league.
Do the Jazz have that? Nobody knows with exactness.
They have Markkanen, and they have the aforementioned youngsters in varying stages of growth, players like Keyonte George and Cody Williams and Taylor Hendricks and Isaiah Collier and Brice Sensabaugh and Walker Kessler, among others. And they have seasoned players to throw into that mix, guys like John Collins and Jordan Clarkson and Collin Sexton and Patty Mills and Svi Mykhailiuk, among others.
But do the Jazz opt to hand key minutes to those vets in order to give themselves a better chance to win games, all in the name of competitive integrity, or do they use them mostly as mentors to teach the kids as they hack their way through so many hard knocks?
“That’s how you really get better,” Markkanen said. “When you get those game reps and we talk about end-of-game situations, you get the high-pressure, end-of-game situations, that’s what’s going to make you better and learn. And there’s probably going to be some mistakes … but I remember me being a rookie and just learning, you happen to make more of them. So, you just understand that. You go out there and compete like we always do and live with the results.”
And die with the results.
That, then, is what Markkanen is being asked to do, is being paid outrageous amounts of money to do — give his best efforts, which have rocketed upward with the Jazz, to lead the team, to teach his teammates, who have much to learn, the ins and outs of the NBA game, and to lean forward through the storms that are bound to come.
He likes living in Utah — “I love it here,” he said — experiencing the beauty and the activities of the vast outdoors. He does not like the L’s that too often are hung around his neck. But he said he will do what Jazz fans have no choice but to do, for as long as it takes, for as long as they can endure it — put faith in Ainge and Zanik and Smith, even through periods when the plan and path they are laying down toward their stated goal of a championship appears convoluted.
It has been convoluted. Are they losing to better position themselves for the draft or are they winning for mediocrity’s sake? Over the past two seasons, they’ve done both.
“I’m trusting those guys,” said Markkanen. “We have good people in this building [who’ve] proven that they can get the job done. So I’m worrying about myself and my teammates and just getting better.”
Worry — however he meant it — is just the right word.
