Walker Kessler's season-ending shoulder surgery is undoubtedly a setback for the Utah Jazz, as evidenced by them losing all but one of their games since losing him on Halloween. However, the one sort of upside to his injury is that it justifies a universally hated move the Jazz made this offseason: trading for Jusuf Nurkic.
When it was announced that the Jazz had swapped Collin Sexton for Nurkic this summer, it was met with a colossal, "WHAT?!" While a Sexton trade felt like it was coming one way or the other, getting only Nurkic and having to give up a second-rounder, confused pretty much everyone because Sexton was seen as the better player and his best days were ahead of him.
That is still true, but with the season so young, Kessler's injury unintentionally makes the Nurkic trade look brilliant because it gives the Jazz a pure five to start for the team. In other words, now they need him. As good as Sexton is, he wasn't someone Utah needed anymore.
Nurkic isn't the player he once was, but if there's something he has proven, it's that he can still play. In a contract year, he has shown that he can still get on the boards (8.9 rebounds a game), and pass the ball (three assists per game) in almost 22 minutes a game.
Those are all-around pretty solid numbers for a starting center. Just don't look at his shooting efficiencies...
The Jazz's guard play has also helped mitigate Sexton's absence
Utah trading Sexton had little to do with what he can and can't do on the floor, but more about the fact that they wanted to see what they had in their young guards, like Keyonte George, Walter Clayton Jr., and Isaiah Collier.
While Collier has only just returned from injury, George has looked like he has the makings of the Jazz's next All-Star guard and Clayton looks like he could turn into one of Utah's biggest draft day steals. There's no telling if they would have shown such progress had Sexton still been on the team.
Is it still an uneven deal? Of course it is. However, Nurkic suddenly became a lot more important to the Jazz after suffering one of the worst breaks they could have feasibly imagined. It's not like he's dominating, but Utah would be in a much worse position right now with the team Kesslerless if Nurkic weren't on the team.
Sexton is the better player, but currently, the Jazz needed Nurkic more than they needed him. Even if this isn't exactly how they would have wanted to prove it.