With last night's 144-107 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, the Utah Jazz have reached the 25-game mark of the NBA season. And at 5-20, they are on the verge of making history. Just not the kind that fans want to see.
The 1974-75 expansion New Orleans Jazz had a 2-23 mark at 25 games, and the 1979-80 Utah Jazz (first year in Utah) were 4-21 at the same juncture. Those teams hold spots 1 and 2 for the worst starts in franchise history.
The 2024-25 Utah Jazz have notched the 3rd worst start in team history after 25 games with their 5-20 mark, just behind the fourth worst version of the Jazz all-time.
That would be the 2013-14 team, which had lost Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson from the 2012-13 season and had no true franchise player (Gordon Hayward was still a few years away from being that guy). At the 25-game mark, they were 6-19.
One thing that none of those teams did, that the 2024-25 Jazz team could end up doing, is losing 60 games. That is something the Jazz have prided themselves on NOT doing for decades, even as other great franchises fell prey to horrible seasons and crossed the 60-loss mark.
Some will say that to fully commit to the rebuild, one must hit bottom and start over. We have seen this around the NBA with teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Houston Rockets, and the San Antonio Spurs, who traded stars and went full-on with the youth movements to rebuild their teams into playoff-contending teams in 2024-25.
And yet we see other teams like the Washington Wizards and Charlotte Hornets, who seem to be building forever without a lot to show for it.
Is it vital for the Utah Jazz to truly bottom out with a 60-plus loss season in their quest to get the best young talent available at the top of the NBA Draft?
The answer is complicated
Having a down year or two to gather talent, make a coaching change, and shed the roster of bad contracts, followed by building years where significant progress is made, seem to be common threads of teams that successfully navigate their rebuilds.
As for history with those Jazz teams that came before us with the horrible starts:
The 1974-75 Jazz team finished 23-59, the closest to a 60-loss season in Jazz history. Yet the next year, they improved by 15 games and hovered in the 30-win range for a while, though they did not make the playoffs for many years.
The 1979-80 Jazz team went 24-58 and stayed in neutral for several more seasons before they broke out in 1983-84, going 44-38. That season, they made the franchise's first playoff appearance and won a division title and their first playoff series.
The 2013-14 Utah team finished 25-57 and steadily improved over the next several years before a 51-31 season in 2016-17 erased their playoff drought.
As other teams have shown in recent years, a bad season can be the precursor to bigger things. It might be hard for now, but let's bank on the tank.