Jazz Mailbag: Can Fans Enjoy Wins In Lottery Bound Season?
Jan 7, 2025, 12:38 PM | Updated: Jan 9, 2025, 5:13 pm
Brice Sensabaugh #28 of the Utah Jazz (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)
(Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)
SALT LAKE CITY – Welcome to the Utah Jazz mailbag where this week we ask if fans should enjoy wins when the team is clearly lottery-bound.
Each week we will send out a prompt on X and BlueSky asking for the questions you have about the Jazz.
Then, we’ll respond to as many as we can in that week’s mailbag.
Mailbag: Should Jazz Fans Be Frustrated By Wins?
As fan I am becoming very frustrated with team. I personally hate seeing them win any games this season. Just want them to full on tank & get top 3 pick already. These wins this past weekend just left a sour taste for me. Am I wrong to feel this way? Is anyone to blame for this?
— JazzNation (@JazzNationNews) January 6, 2025
Question: As a fan, I am becoming very frustrated with the team. I personally hate seeing them win any games this season. Just want them to full-on tank and get a top-three pick already. These wins this past weekend just left a sour taste for me. Am I wrong to feel this way? Is anyone to blame for this?
Answer: First, let me say no, you are not wrong for feeling frustrated with the team winning games when one of the priorities this season is to land the highest draft pick possible.
But, let me also add that NBA fans feel this way because they’ve been conditioned to believe that a top-three draft pick is the only ticket out of a rebuild, and I believe that is incorrect.
Allow me to clarify.
Yes, the Jazz having the lottery balls bounce in their favor, and delivering one of Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper Jr., or Ace Bailey is the ideal outcome from this season.
Safe to say the Jazz winning back-to-back games in Miami and Orlando would come as a major surprise at this point in the season.
— Ben Anderson (@BensHoops) January 6, 2025
Related: Jazz Beat Miami And Orlando On Back-To-Back Nights
However, that doesn’t mean the Jazz can’t have a successful draft if they wind up picking between 4-8, or that none of the players selected in that range will have more success than the consensus top three.
In fact, rarely in the history of the NBA Draft would the players selected 1-3 go in that same order if teams were given a do-over four years down the line.
It also doesn’t mean that the draft is the Jazz’s only ticket to winning basketball.
During the 2006-07 season, the Danny Ainge-led Boston Celtics finished with a record of 24-58, second-worst in the NBA, with the hopes of drafting Kevin Durant.
In the lottery, they slipped from second to fifth, and wound up sending that pick (Jeff Green) to the Seattle Sonics for Ray Allen on draft night.
A month later, Ainge traded a series of promising young players from the Celtics to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Kevin Garnett, and Boston won the NBA title the next June.
Essentially, Ainge had a plan to land a top-two lottery pick, but when that failed, he had a contingency plan, and it worked out better than if they’d drafted Durant in the first place.
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Furthermore, let’s make sure we’re not overrating the value of each win when it comes to lottery balls.
Remember, wins at this point are more likely to impact whether you draft 5-8 than they are 1-4.
With the recently restructured lottery odds, teams who finish with the three worst records all have identical odds of drafting 1-4.
The team that finishes with the fourth-worst record will only see its odds of drafting 1-4 drop by a total of four percentage points, and the team that finishes with the fifth-worst record will only see its odds drop by a total of 9.2 percent across the top-four spots.
While those nine percentage points aren’t unimportant, it’s probably not worth losing sleep over.
What do you think Brice’s long term NBA role could be on a good team? He seems best with ball in hand rather than just spacing to the corner. Sixth man? Do you think his defense is improving?
— Alex Currit (@alexcurrit.bsky.social) January 6, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Question: What do you think Brice’s long-term NBA role could be on a good team?
Answer: Right now, my gut tells me Sensabaugh projects as a sixth or seventh man on a good team due to his still-developing playmaking and defensive skills.
As good as his physical tools are, he’s not the prototypical big wing like Jayson Tatum or Kevin Durant who have dominated the NBA in recent years, or the do-it-all guard like Shai Gilegous-Alexander or Luka Doncic who appear capable of leading their teams to an NBA title.
That’s not to say the expectation is that Sensabaugh should be one of those players, but based on how teams are building their rosters in the current NBA, Sensabaugh might actually be underutilized by what his role would be if he were starting on a good roster.
When playing 20 minutes or more (8 appearances), Brice Sensabaugh is averaging 16.3 points and 3.7 rebounds while shooting 51 percent from the floor and 51 percent from three on 7.3 attempts.
He hasn’t played more than 28 minutes in any game this season.
— Ben Anderson (@BensHoops) January 6, 2025
That’s because he’s not yet a good enough playmaker to take reps over the team’s best guards, and doesn’t have enough of a physical advantage to justify getting the lion’s share of the shots.
That would leave a team asking Sensabaugh to be a floor-spacing, 3-and-D wing which probably asks too much of him defensively while limiting his offensive potential.
In a perfect world, Sensabaugh would further develop as a defender and playmaker and become a Desmond Bane-like third star for the Jazz.
If that doesn’t happen, I think he can have a long career as a high-level scorer on any second unit.
Want to ask questions in next week’s mailbag? Give us a follow at @kslsports.
Ben Anderson is the Utah Jazz insider for KSL Sports and the co-host of Jake and Ben from 10-12p with Jake Scott on 97.5 The KSL Sports Zone. Find Ben on Twitter at @BensHoops, on Instagram @BensHoops, or on BlueSky.
