The 2024 NBA Draft Lottery is this Sunday, and the Jazz like other teams will find out their draft fate.
With the potential to land a Top 3 pick, or stay around the 8th pick, much will be clarified in less than 24 hours for the team's offseason.
However, the man making the draft calls for the Jazz recently went on record about the 2024 NBA Draft, showing that he wasn't as confident in finding a star player as the Jazz fans may have hoped.
""It's harder to find franchise-altering players in this draft than in some drafts,""Danny Ainge
He added to it later in the same conversation:
""Last year, you had like the top three were pretty well defined — even at this time (before the lottery)...Maybe not the exact order. But some order of the top three. This year, I'm not sure what those are.""Danny Ainge
Now that we are a month removed from the season's end, it's obvious that Jazz fans want results, and they want a better team in 2024-25 and don't want to wait through 2 or 3 more years of rebuilding.
Coming off of a 31-51 season that raised more questions than answers, the Utah Jazz need to get things right this offseason.
Selecting 3 more players in this year's draft (based on the 3 picks the Jazz currently own) would increase the roster's youth. This is not the way to go if you're shopping for big-time free agents, as Ainge recently declared the Jazz would do.
Making strong trades to improve the roster, using the sizable cap room in free agency, and extending Lauri Markkanen are all on the table, and need to be handled this summer.
NBA players who have team or player options have deadlines in late June (usually around the 27th or 28th), and team executives like to sort that out before the draft where possible, so they can draft a replacement if a rotation player is planning to walk.
With several teams looking to reset or retool after disappointing seasons, there will likely be surprise players that end up on the trade market, even before the NBA Draft on June 26-27.
Hopefully, Danny Ainge has a plan and can execute it in the coming weeks and months to build another winning Utah Jazz team. It all starts on Sunday night when the NBA Draft Lottery commences.