The Utah Jazz had three picks going into the 2025 NBA Draft: No. 10, No. 29, and No. 32. One year into their NBA careers, and it has been clear thus far that the Jazz went two for three.
It's amazing that they nailed two late picks, as getting just one right would have sufficed. However, the poor performance of the highest pick of the three still reflects poorly on the class as a whole. It's not even debatable that Cody Williams had a terrible rookie year.
Williams looked like a deer in the headlights at the start of the season, and that did not change at all by the time his rookie year ended prematurely. Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes summarized Williams's rookie year.
"The No. 10 pick made 18 field goals in his first 16 games and scored in double digits just four times all season. He made 32.3 percent of his shots from the field, 25.9 percent from deep, and averaged just 2.0 assists and 3.8 rebounds per 36 minutes. Just 19 when he was drafted, the 6'7" wing has plenty of time to find his game. But Williams was invisible as a rookie," Hughes wrote.
He gave Isaiah Collier and Kyle Filipowski some credence for their rookie seasons, but that didn't stop him from giving the Jazz a C.
"Collier drives the ball effectively and ranks in the 80th percentile among point guards in assist rate, while Filipowski might be among (the) five best offensive rookies in the class," Hughes wrote.
That grade's much harsher than it should be
Nothing that Hughes said about Williams is incorrect. While the optimistic outlook is that he's a work-in-progress, it will be a lot of work, and progress looks like it will be pretty slow for him.
However, what the Jazz have in Collier and Filipowski extends past the fact that they were draft steals. Just getting rotation players is fortunate enough when picking past the lottery, but those two have proven that there could be more to them than that.
Collier has proven he might be the Jazz's next great playmaker, having broken John Stockton's record for most assists by a Jazz rookie. There's definitely some work to do as a shooter, but he could be the Jazz's starting point guard for the foreseeable future.
Filipowski also put up a 30-point-15 rebounds statline against the Trail Blazers, which a Jazz rookie had never done before. With each passing game, it's been clear that Filipowski could actually be special. Like Collier, there's some work to do, particularly with his defense, but both have proven they could be building blocks of something special.
The Jazz's 2024-25 rookie class doesn't deserve an A overall, and obviously, the culprit for why is Williams. However, Collier and Filipowski's exceeding expectations as much as they did should badly outweigh Williams' coming short of expectations.
When averaging out an A and an A with an F, it rounds out to around a B or a B-. The Jazz rookie class could have been better overall, but that feels much more appropriate than a C.