A lot has happened with the Utah Jazz this offseason, and yet not much has been said about Lauri Markkanen. You know, the franchise player that Utah found out of nowhere who has stayed through the thick and thin of what's been a long and painful rebuild? There should be more mention of him because he's going to play a huge role in how good the Jazz will be this season.
Jazz fans already knew this, and NBA fans know how good Markkanen is. What NBA fans in general don't know is the full extent of how good Markkanen is with no shackles on. He showed exactly that at the start of last season. Locked on Jazz's David Locke pointed this out about the Jazz star.
Lot of Lauri talk on this platform today.
— David Locke (@DLocke09) July 28, 2026
Quck reminder. First 14 games of the last year he shot 49% FG, 39% 3pt, 89% FT and scored 31 pts per game and was playing so hard people were legitimately concerned he would hurt himself.
Those were just the counting numbers. The game film more or less showed just how dominant he was when nothing was holding him back.
Advanced analytics largely proved that what Markkanen put up wasn't empty numbers. The Jazz's net rating with Markkanen in the first 14 games of the season was plus-13.4, per NBA.com. To be more specific, the Jazz were minus-1.4 when he was on the floor, but minus-14.8 when he was off the floor.
Stats like those are cut and dry evidence of why Utah benched him to aid their tank. He simply was too good to keep the Jazz bad. Starting at 5-9 was bad, but Utah sadly had to make sure they got even worse.
Note: Walker Kessler going down five games into the season also contributed to their immediate decline.
Markkanen will finally be unleashed
Markkanen had a resurgent season with the Jazz when they asked him to play. In fact, the only reason why he didn't get more All-Star buzz was because of the tank. Hopefully, this season, it will be so much different than before.
Utah will no longer hold him back from being the player everyone knows he can be for an entire season. Markkanen should be able to go full throttle on the league now that Utah has assembled a winner on paper. No Kessler affects the team's ceiling a bit, but that doesn't change how much of a ceiling raiser The Finnisher is.
For the past four years, Markkanen has shown just how good he is in spurts. Because the Jazz were thinking more about the greater good, Markkanen has never gotten a fair chance to display everything he can do until now.
When you think about how good he was at the start of last season, it's actually hard to think of what the Jazz's ceiling could be now that the floodgates have finally opened.
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