The Utah Jazz could be in for a lot of changes this summer. With such being the case, who will remain on the roster and who will be elsewhere in 2019-20?
Sad though it is to take for most Utah Jazz fans, rather than enjoy their team thrive in the NBA Playoffs, they’re left to watch a slew of former Jazzmen including Rodney Hood, Paul Millsap, George Hill and Enes Kanter ball out in the second round of the playoffs. With Utah facing an early exit (and perhaps missing some of those guys still in the running), it’s evident that they’ll need to look to make some major upgrades this summer.
We’ve already talked extensively here on The J-Notes about potential free agent targets the Jazz could pursue, and there will be much more of that to come. The likes of Tobias Harris, Kemba Walker and so many more all provide intriguing, albeit difficult to obtain, options.
However, rather than look outside of the Jazz roster, this time let’s instead look internally at Utah’s free agents and other various players that could be impacted this summer. With three unrestricted free agents and several guys who have the next year of their contract non-guaranteed combined with the Jazz facing a clear need for roster upgrades, there’s a very good chance that we’ll see a lot of changes to the roster this summer.
That will be a massive shift from a year ago wherein the Jazz kept the exact same roster intact save for drafting Grayson Allen and guaranteeing a contract for Georges Niang to take the spots of Jonas Jerebko and David Stockton. But it will also be an exciting change of pace. Despite a discouraging loss to the Houston Rockets in the first round of the playoffs, the Jazz remain right on the cusp of competing with the upper tier of the Western Conference and a few upgrades here and there may very well do the trick.
So with those inevitable shifts bound to happen, the question that emerges is, who can we expect to remain a Jazzman next year and who will be gone? It’s impossible to know all the answers of how free agency or the trade market will shake up, but I’ll still do the best I can to peer into my crystal ball and project who we can expect in the blue, green and gold, and who we can assume will be playing in other threads next season.