If you haven’t read Sarah Todd’s latest article on the state of the Utah Jazz rebuild, get reading! Don’t worry, I’ll wait, just make sure you come back.

Thank you for coming back. Now, there’s some incredible stuff in there, and I may dissect it more in the future, but the first important quote that sticks out to me is this one about what Utah wants to do next year, even if they win the #1 pick this lottery and select Cooper Flagg. Todd writes:

Let’s start with what many view as the best case scenario — the Jazz getting the No. 1 overall pick in 2025 and selecting Cooper Flagg.

A starting lineup that features Flagg, Kessler and Markkanen sounds pretty incredible when thinking about future potential. But is that going to be a starting lineup that would win too many games? That’s a real fear, because the Jazz don’t want to give up their 2026 first-rounder.

AJ Dybantsa, the nation’s No. 1 basketball recruit, is presented at halftime of the BYU and Fresno State game at the Marriott Center in Provo on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

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I want to be clear here, the Jazz absolutely want to have another high draft pick in 2026. With players like AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer all looking like future stars, there’s good reason for the Jazz to want to lose a lot of games next season.

And they want to.

The only thing that could keep the Jazz from tanking next season would be a wildly huge move, like Devin Booker, Jayson Tatum or another top-tier player becoming available. Though those things are possible (let’s not forget we saw Luka Doncic traded this year), they’re not likely.

If you didn’t know, Utah’s pick next year is top-8 protected. If they fall out of the top-8, it goes to the Oklahoma City Thunder. If that pick doesn’t convey, then it turns into second-round picks, and the saga of the Derrick Favors trade will be over. For me, hearing the Jazz absolutely want another top pick in next year’s draft is music to my ears. Utah is not even close to contending and the worst thing they can do is to jump the gun with just one pick. They are missing top-end talent, and the draft is the ONLY way for them to get that.

And barring a star player like Booker or Tatum from becoming available, as Todd says, they will plan on being bad again. So, how does that fit with Lauri Markkanen during this continued teardown? Todd writes:

So, then we look at what happens if the Jazz get Flagg but are too good to tank. The Jazz would obviously try to injury report their way into losses again, but keeping Flagg might require trading Markkanen or Kessler, and the Jazz already know that there is a market for both players and that teams will be willing to pay a pretty good price.

I’m not saying that the Jazz are definitely looking to trade either one of those guys. But it wouldn’t shock me if they did should they land Flagg. Of course, if they don’t get Flagg, they can probably massage their way through another tanking season without trading Markkanen or Kessler. Probably.

It certainly sounds like anything is on the table. Personally, if I had to choose between one of those players to move, I’m starting to think that player is Lauri Markkanen for a few reasons. The first is his new contract. Markkanen will be making around $50M in the next four years. Then, when Walker Kessler becomes contract eligible, It’s hard not to see him getting something like Isaiah Hartenstein got with the Oklahoma City Thunder (3 years, about $30M per year). So if Kessler gets something in that range along with Markkanen, that’s $80M tied between just those two. Now, that might work, but that’s going to be difficult for Utah to maneuver as things go along.

It gets even more difficult if the statistical trends we see from Markkanen continue. Markkanen is pretty lucky he’s gotten lost in the sauce in Utah. This season, Markkanen is shooting 42.5% from the field and 34.7% from three. And when you look at his defensive numbers, they’re not great. Whether it’s ESPN’s new net points analytics or Basketball Index’s D-Lebron, Markkanen grades out as a negative defender, sometimes a very negative defender. Not great when you consider he’s making max level money. And considering that we’ve learned that for him to succeed requires other players to set him up, it makes that contract look not great. Other people are starting to take notice, too. The Ringer’s top 100 has Lauri Markkanen at 48, and on Bill Simmons’s latest podcast, he got an honorable mention in their worst contract rankings. Not great.

Knowing that, and that the Utah Jazz do not have a cornerstone player, this offseason comes with a huge question: Should the Utah Jazz trade Lauri Markkanen?

Probably yes.

Utah skier Joe Davies has been absent from some meets this year for the Utes, but it was for a good reason.

Davies, a a Nordic skier, started just four meets for the Utes. The reason he missed the others? He was competing in the skiing World Cup, where he made six starts and finished in the top 20 four times.

“It’s always a super interesting kind of season going back and forth between World Cup and college racing. Racing at the World Championships was kind of a lot of stress and pressure at least on my end,” said Davies, who still earned All-RMISA first-team honors in his limited time with the Utes.

“So for me, getting to come back to the college scene and see all my friends and be with the Utah team, I think it helped a lot with the nerves. It felt really, I felt like I was back at home.”

On Saturday, in the final event of the NCAA skiing championships, Davies’ World Cup skill and experience paid off as he helped Utah reclaim the title and avenge its narrow loss to Colorado last year.

Davies finished the men’s 20K freestyle with a time of 43:33.9, over a minute ahead of second-place John Steel Hagenbuch of Dartmouth (44:44.1).

Utah teammate Brian Bushey wasn’t far behind, finishing in third place with a time of 45:11.3, and Zachary Jayne rounded out the Ute participants with a 10th-place finish (46:07.9).

“That was just incredibly special, and I mean, we as a Nordic team today, we just absolutely crushed it. Having Brian in third and Zach not very far behind to have that highest scoring men’s team was just more than we could have hoped for,” Davies said.

With 95 team points in the men’s event, the Utes had a 56-point lead heading into the women’s 20K freestyle but needed the women’s team to perform well to seal the championship.

Behind a second-place performance by Erica Laven, who finished the race in 50:49.6, a fifth-place finish by Selma Nevin (51:30.6) and a 19th-place finish by Celine Mayer (53:51.5), the women’s team put up 78 points to finish first in the event and bring home the NCAA championship.

“I think it’s always some nerves. We knew we had a stable lead and we went out there with confidence but still knowing that we needed to do good, and every teammate was just saying to us, ‘Go out, have fun and do your best. That’s all you can do,’ which helped a lot with the nerves,” Laven said.

“When I came into the finish and waited for both Selma and Celine, I wasn’t really thinking about (the title), and then when we all passed the finish line, we saw the whole team standing there and just screaming that we won, which was, I got so warm in my whole body after that and I was so happy.”

Over the four-day event, Utah scored 590 points — besting second-place Colorado (513) and third-place Dartmouth (508) — to earn its fourth national championship in the past five years and 17th overall national title.

“I mean last year for sure, you realize it’s a lot more fun to win than finish second, so we were kind of feeding on that all year long that we need to come back and get another title here, so that really inspired us. Very special to win this, ” Utah director of skiing Fredrik Landstedt said.

After two days in third place in the standings, including being down 61 points to first-place Colorado after the opening day of competition, Utah took control of first place on Friday.

A giant slalom win by Johs Braathen Herland that boosted the men’s team to a No. 1 finish, followed by a first-place finish by the women’s team, led by Kaja Norbye and Claire Timmermann slotting in fourth and fifth place, respectively.

“They really came out charging the third day and put us in the lead, which was great,” Landstedt said.

The Utes sealed the championship on Saturday with good performances in the 20K freestyle.

“This was just such an awesome moment with the team at the end of the women’s race when we realized we’ve got it,” Davies said. “Yeah, obviously last year was super painful with such a tight loss, but it really meant a lot to come back and prove how good we are by winning with such a large margin this year, and also for me, my last college race, so it’s super meaningful.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called for a more coordinated approach to the state’s tough-on-crime streak as the 2025 legislative session came to a close.

Lawmakers introduced a record 86 bills this year increasing criminal penalties — far more than at any other point in the past decade — with over half of them becoming law.

“The sheer numbers … are a little bit overwhelming,” Cox told the Deseret News on Friday night. “That’s why I honestly think you do have to take a holistic approach, and that can happen next session.”

Before the session even began on Jan. 21, House Republicans began introducing a slate of new bills to address the public safety impacts of historic immigration, persistent chronic homelessness and growing numbers of sexual offenses.

These are very real problems the legislature is responding to, Cox said. The reality and perception of increased criminal activity must be addressed — but it will be much more effective, and less costly, if criminal enhancement efforts advance an overall vision of how criminal justice needs to change in the state, Cox said.

“I’m not sure what we’re going to end up with at the end of the day, except maybe having to go to a new prison,” Cox said, “because if you keep stacking these things and adding them up, and every one might make sense, but how do they work in conjunction?”

A few years ago, the Legislature embarked on a yearslong mission to bring about comprehensive criminal justice reform, Cox recalled. This may have swung the pendulum too far one way, Cox said, and he wants to make sure lawmakers don’t swing it too far the other way by not coordinating their efforts.

This session, House lawmakers passed the Senate immigration bills enhancing criminal penalties for fentanyl distribution, human trafficking and gang recruitment; homelessness bills enhancing penalties for drug use in shelters and prohibiting syringe exchange programs in certain areas; and sexual assault bills enhancing penalties for repeat sexual offenders and creating new offenses for sexual abuse using virtual reality.

Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, told the Deseret News that Senate leadership went through each of the criminal enhancement bills at various points during the session to determine whether they were necessary, effective or overly broad.

“We were really careful this session,” Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, said, “making sure that we weren’t enhancing too much. … But you know those really egregious crimes where we were a little deficient, we did in that case where it was appropriate.”

Some bills — including proposals enabling police to impound cars of unlicensed drivers and expanding immigration enforcement for employers — reached dead ends despite extensive conversations with stakeholders.

While others, like a bill that would make immigrants convicted of some misdemeanors eligible for immediate deportation, faced serious revisions to narrow their scope before they passed through the Senate.

Steve Burton, a criminal defense lawyer, and the president of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, pointed out that increasing the severity of punishment is a far less effective deterrent to crime than increasing the swiftness and certainty of law enforcement responses.

But Burton credited the Legislature for working hard to balance its approach despite the record number of criminal enhancement bills.

“The Legislature made a more concerted effort than ever to try to identify ways to to be more targeted in their penalty enhancements,” Burton told the Deseret News. “But the problem is, when so many penalty enhancements are introduced in the first place, it’s difficult, even when it’s targeted, to keep the balance between being tough on crime and being smart.”

House Law Enforcement Chair Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, said he recognizes that criminal enhancements are “generally a one way ratchet” but he said there have been real increases in crime, particularly related to new technologies, that require new criminal justice remedies.

To counter the surge in penalty enhancements, which Wilcox acknowledged has been “out of whack,” Wilcox ran and passed a bill this session that would require state agencies to consider which criminal penalties under their purview are not needed.

Cox calls vote by mail reform ‘brilliant’

During a Friday night press conference, Cox told reporters that he thought this session’s bicameral election reform compromise bill was “brilliant.”

Following a contentious 2024 election cycle and two critical audits, House leadership proposed a bill, HB300, that would require ballots to be returned in-person with photo ID — fundamentally altering Utah’s mature vote-by-mail system.

But extensive negotiations with Senate leadership yielded a bill that would maintain most features of mail-in ballots but would require voters to place four digits of a state ID on their ballots, to opt-in by 2029 to continue receiving a ballot in the mail, and to get their ballot to county clerks by 8 p.m. on election night to be counted.

While Cox criticized those who spread inaccurate claims about mass fraud in Utah elections, he said steps are needed at the state level to ensure even election skeptics can trust the system.

“I’m concerned about the erosion of trust in elections,” Cox said. “We get the best of both worlds. We still have vote by mail for those who want to vote by mail. We have more security for those who are using vote by mail.”

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who serves as the state’s chief elections officer, spoke wearily of the 59 election bills introduced this session. Her office worked with countless bill sponsors to make sure changes were improving the election process and not decreasing access.

The biggest accomplishment?

“We saved vote by mail,” Henderson said. “Utahns love vote by mail. They trust vote by mail. They prefer vote by mail. There’s always things that we can be doing to improve the process, improve security, improve access and make voting better.”

In his review of the 2025 legislative session, Cox said the state had returned to pre-COVID-19 levels of spending and that despite the difficulty of a 45-day legislative work window, the different chambers and branches of government exemplified good process.

Cox touted the issues his office has led out on that the Legislature passed, including first-in-the-nation regulations for social media company data-sharing, app store accountability for young users and prohibitions on cellphones in school classrooms.

On the two priorities of his second term — increasing affordable homes by 35,000 units and doubling energy production over the next decade — Cox pointed to bills facilitating condo ownership and funding for nuclear energy development.