Who would the Utah Jazz protect during an NBA expansion draft?

The NBA’s possible expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas would mean saying goodbye to players on the Utah Jazz roster. Who would they keep, and who would they let leave?

With NBA expansion coming in the not-too-far-future, the Utah Jazz (as well as the other 29 NBA teams) would need to decide who to protect and who to leave exposed for selection by the expansion teams.

For the Utah Jazz, they have had an ownership change and a lot of changes in management since the last expansion draft.

However, Danny Ainge was president of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics during the 2004 expansion draft, so he has been through this before.

The 2004 expansion draft was held for the newly minted Charlotte Bobcats, who later took over the Hornets moniker and history.

The rules of that expansion draft included:

Ability for an NBA franchise to protect up to 8 players who are under contract, or who are restricted free agents (RFA) after the recent NBA season.

If a team does not have a combination of contracted and RFA players totaling the minimum of 8, they must leave at least 1 of their players exposed for the expansion draft.

The ability for the expansion franchise to select at least 14 players but no more than 1 from any one team.

Based on those rules, and using the hypothetical scenario that the expansion draft was held in June 2024, who would the Utah Jazz keep, and who would they expose to be selected in that draft?

Just a reminder – Unrestricted free agents are not eligible for selection in the expansion draft. That means that Kris Dunn, Kelly Olynyk, Talen Horton-Tucker, Simone Fontecchio, and Luka Samanic aren’t in the equation and won’t be discussed below.

As of now, the Jazz have 10 players under contract for 2024-25 who they would be eligible to protect and would have to choose 8 of those and leave 2 exposed.