Calvin Barrett is a writer, editor, and prolific Mario Kart racer located in Provo, Utah. Currently writing for SB Nation and FanSided, he has covered the Utah Jazz and BYU athletics since 2024 and graduated (woohoo!) from Utah Valley University.
I had that dream again.
The one where Utah appears at the NBA Draft Lottery reveal with a favorable chance to grab the top selection, only to trip, slide, and tumble all the way down to the 5th overall selection.
In a cold sweat, I bolt and sit upright in my bed. Rigid. Perspiring. Anxious. After an 82-game slate that cast the Utah Jazz to the worst record not only in the NBA but also in franchise history, an all-too-real possibility haunts my subconscious mind, in which the sacrificial Jazz are cast to the depths of reality.
Obscured by a twisted mirror of horror and helplessness, my vision is skewed by a probability. A hypothetical. Good heavens, I’ve been cast into a dimension wherein suffering is not quenched — only met with a second helping. My tummy is full, Grandma. I couldn’t possibly stomach another helping of green bean casserole. My resistance is futile. As the jumbo spoon scoops another heap of greens with mysterious fluid, the NBA lottery odds are out of my control, and the result unmoving.
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The tanking cycle calls to me, and I fear I may be incapable of more oblivion.
Heaven forbid, Utah falls in the draft order, and the draft pool shallows out far too quickly. How many more years of torment? How many painful defeats in the name of potential deliverance? Just how long can the Utah Jazz satiate their hungry fanbase on faith and broken dreams?
Maybe this is all a touch dramatic (Me? Dramatic?). Let’s reel in our emotions before “what ifs” catch our line and drag us off the pontoon. Yes, the Jazz could realistically drop to the 5th spot. Does that really suggest doomsday for this taffy-pulled rebuilding process?
With reason as my advocate, let us evaluate a pool of dark horse candidates for the Jazz’s draft selection. Assuming the most popular top four players are off the table (Flagg, Harper, Bailey, Edgecombe), who are some attractive replacements to step onto Utah’s young depth chart and electrify the reconstruction process?
Put simply: who are the sleeper candidates that could make Utah the winners of the draft, even if Cooper Flagg shakes Adam Silver’s hat with travel plans to San Antonio this June (heaven forbid)?
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Sleeper Draft Picks Who Could Transform the Jazz
I’ve got to get myself back to bed, so let’s embrace sleep the same way I do every night: desperately rationalizing my imprudent NBA Draft biases. I might need a better hobby.
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Tre Johnson attacks the paint in a game against Arkansas.Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images
Candidate 1: Tre Johnson | G | Texas
Gasp! The player on the article’s cover is making an appearance in the text itself? Yes, I know, please simmer down as I attempt to make sense of my not-so-extreme claim.
Is Tre Johnson a popular name in the top-10 range of this draft class? Of course. So here’s my twist: Tre Johnson would be an incomprehensibly terrific outcome compared to his peers likely to be selected directly before him — Bailey and Harper.
Maybe I’m hiking in a wilderness all my own on this one, but the more I envision a projected career for each of these three players, one intrusive thought plants its claws in my mind’s eye and refuses to release until I yield to its insistence: Does the NBA overrate pure athleticism?
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Given the raw, god-given ability delivered to each of these three off-ball hoopers, Johnson is well behind his classmates in this subject.
Please forgive me, oh jury of the internet, when I reply with the following.
Big whoop.
That’s right. Big whoop. I’m going against the grain. I’m swimming upstream. I’m searching the internet for more cliches to vomit onto the page. When I look at Johnson, I see a player with the offensive utility belt that could lift the Texan into rarified air in the NBA.
An aetherial scorer and gifted bucket-getter, Tre uses his offensive dousing rods to uncover invisible treasures that mere mortals are simply incapable of revealing. When I see Tre Johnson, I see a ceiling akin to the career path of Devin Booker.
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Consistency grabs my attention when evaluating Johnson. A near 40% 3-point shooter and comfortable scorer from anywhere on the floor, he only dropped below double-digits twice on the season as he led the SEC in points per game. As an 18-year-old freshman, he averaged 19.9 per night against the stiffest competition in the nation.
Here’s my pitch: stop salivating over the quote-unquote “high ceilings” of the especially athletic, and start fixating on prospects with a specific and tantalizing talent. If Johnson is still on the board, the Jazz should grab him.
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Fears attacks a dangerous tandem at the 3-point line.Photo by Matt Kelley/Getty Images
2. Jeremiah Fears | G | Oklahoma
Hold on, hold on. Everybody, quiet down for a second. Yes, I know he struggled shooting the ball at Oklahoma in his freshman year. Yes, I know he’s been known to dip his finger into a few too many hot apple turnovers. Yes, I know that the Jazz are already testing the waters with a fascinating point guard prospect in Isaiah Collier.
I know you know. I get the concept.
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But Fears could stealthily become the best point guard in this entire draft class. Save for Dylan Harper — who, we must tragically remind our audience, is unavailable for this thought exercise — the list is very shallow above Fears at the one.
Do you want to know how I really feel about some of the other point guard options in this bunch?
Caution: Entering Ad Hominem Pun Zone. Hazmat suit mandatory past this door
Jakucionis? Jaku Ci U later.
Nolan Traore? More like… No, man. Try no way!
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Egor Demin? …I could never speak ill of you.
Fears plays in spite of his namesake. He abandons all hesitancy at the door and flips all 26 locks, bolting the exit shut. Sure, the 3-ball didn’t fall with much consistency this season (hitting sub-30% as a freshman), but he could never be dissuaded from an attempt that could be successful.
It’s clear that his remote control has no pause button, and his car has no brake pedal… and likely no seatbelts to that point.
Athleticism with a punch of power and a drenching of creative finishing moves makes this Sooner a fascinating proposition in the NBA. If his pull-up jumper clicks into place and his decision-making receives a tune-up, we could see Fears become a viable option in leading an NBA offense.
Tight handle. Paint magnetism. A thirst for success unquenchable by even a highly refreshing Lime Cucumber Gatorade. Don’t be surprised if Fears becomes a popular riser in the rumor mill.
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Noa Essengue, baby.Photo by Harry Langer/DeFodi Images via Getty Images
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Noa Essengue | F | France
You may already be well aware of how I feel about this international play-dough prospect. In my very own words, “Love it or hate it, Essengue is an inevitable force soon to hit the National Basketball Association.”
Depending on who you ask, Essengue is a holographic projection who could appear anywhere between the top 10 of the upcoming draft or fall somewhere in the 20s.
Slippery. Fluid. Swift. Effortless. String cheese. These are all words I’ve used to describe how Noa moves across the court, and that to me is one of the most fascinating aspects of his profile. At his size and length (6’9” with a very plus wingspan), he appears comfortable on the basketball court, almost to the point where I question if he ever leaves it. In a Tom Haverford-esque maneuver, could he have replaced the insoles of his shoes with hardwood floorboards?
Whatever the case,
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Already a defensive nightmare for his adversaries, his size helps him get into passing lanes, block shots, and pester any offensive action foolish enough to cross his path. On offense, Essengue boasts a surprisingly tight handle and ability to reach into the chest of the defense by reaching the paint. With proper weight training, Essengue could become something of a Giannis-lite with a stronger baseline and potential to stretch his shooting range well beyond that of the Greek Freak.
I’m higher than most on Essengue, and his shooting ability still leaves plenty of room for improvement. But after improving in each of his two professional seasons, Noa’s shooting touch seems to only be working in a positive direction, and could easily project to become a 35% to 37% 3-point man on top of the defensive versatility and hypnotic feel for the game.
If Utah is so inclined, they could reach deep into their bag for this player, even if it’s not the general consensus. Let me put it this way: it would be insane for Essengue to slip to Utah’s second pick in the draft. Trade up, draft early, or miss out.
Like many utilities in the Trump era, Rocky Mountain Power is pulling back on its renewable energy plans. But more than a dozen Utah communities are taking matters into their own hands.
About 300,000 homes and businesses will soon be part of a novel, bottom-up program to bring new clean power to the state’s fossil-fuel-heavy grid. The Utah Renewable Communities initiative allows city and county governments to offset their electricity use with 100 percent renewable power, backed by a $4 monthly bill surcharge.
“There’s no other program available to our residents that is this affordable or this impactful to Midvale’s environmental and economic future,” said Dustin Gettel, mayor of the Salt Lake City suburb of Midvale.
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Midvale is set to vote Tuesday on whether to join 15 other communities that have signed up ahead of an enrollment deadline next week. Three other eligible communities have opted out, although one may reconsider.
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and The Salt Lake Tribune, a nonprofit newsroom in Utah.
A sprawling, 40,000-acre data center planned for northern Utah has stirred up controversy across the state over the past month, partly because of the pollution it’s expected to contribute to a region that already struggles with smog.
Officials with the quasi-governmental Military Installation Development Authority, or MIDA, which approved the project and created tax incentives to spur its development, have become de facto cheerleaders for the data center campus, called the Stratos Project. They say Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian TV personality and the main backer of Stratos, specifically selected a remote valley north of the Great Salt Lake because a gas pipeline runs through it.
The plant that will generate electricity for the data complex would be powered “100 percent off the Ruby Pipeline,” a MIDA official said in April.
But after weeks of protests, reams of comments against the project, and disgruntled Utahns digging into state leaders’ finances and family businesses, the state’s Republican governor has now asserted the project will “never” be solely powered by natural gas.
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“That’s never going to happen,” Governor Spencer Cox told The Salt Lake Tribune last week. “The very first phase will be natural gas, but the other phases should not be. They should be nuclear, and they should be geothermal, and solar and other technology.”
The proposed Stratos Project is light on details so far. O’Leary has said that at full build, it will be one of the biggest data centers in the world, as large as Washington, D.C. Scientists, environmental advocates and some residents have raised alarms about the impact that the project — and the possibility of a massive natural gas plant to power it — could have on air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and water supplies near the shrinking Great Salt Lake.
According to some estimates, a 9-gigawatt power plant entirely powered by natural gas could raise Utah’s carbon emissions by 64 percent. Although it’s still unclear how much water the facility would need, the project’s developers have said they’re working to secure 13,000 acre-feet in Hansel Valley and the surrounding area, which is mostly agricultural. That’s enough water to meet the needs of more than 20,000 households in Utah.
The north end of the Great Salt Lake and Hansel Valley, the planned site for the Stratos Project.
Trent Nelson / The Salt Lake Tribune
Opposition to the proposal has been intense. A water right filed to support the data center and power plant received nearly 4,000 letters of protest this month. Opponents held a rally at Utah’s Capitol last week and delivered a letter to Cox with more than 6,000 signatures urging him to take “binding action” to preserve the Great Salt Lake instead of issuing platitudes over social media.
During a news conference on Wednesday announcing a geothermal partnership with the neighboring states of Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, Cox acknowledged problems with the rollout of the Stratos Project in Box Elder County, saying future decisions like it should involve his office and elected representatives.
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“There’s no question, the process was not good,” Cox told reporters. “It’s something I’ve worried about for a long time with that entity that made that decision.”
Cox appeared to be referring to MIDA, a development authority ostensibly meant to fund projects to support the military. Its biggest developments in recent years, however, include a hotel at the Deer Valley luxury ski resort and a swanky ski village. MIDA officials and other Stratos supporters have called the project a matter of national security.
“That was not a decision that was made by me or the Legislature,” Cox said. “In the future, those are decisions that should be made by us, so that we can do these types of things ahead of time to make sure people understand what’s actually happening out there. That did not happen, and it should happen.”
When he made his comments, Cox was hosting the final workshop in his “Energy Superabundance” initiative as chair of the Western Governors Association, part of a broader push that complements his “Operation Gigawatt” goal to more than double Utah’s energy production over the next decade.
Electricity use across the country has held relatively steady for decades, but a surge in demand for artificial intelligence computing and data centers is putting a strain on the electric grid. That’s left Western states scrambling to build new energy supplies.
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At the same time, public skepticism toward large data center developments appears to be growing, particularly over concerns involving water use, noise, energy costs, and pollution.
“It feels like the future is here,” Cox said during his opening remarks at the workshop. “It’s coming quicker than people asked for, and there are so many amazing things that can come from that future, and some pretty awful ones as well.”
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Cox has also pushed for faster permitting timelines for large energy and infrastructure projects, arguing that environmental review processes often take too long. “This whole idea of being rushed — I’m so tired of our country taking years to get stuff done,” he said in April. “It’s the dumbest thing ever. We think that taking time makes things better or safer. It absolutely does not.”
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Last week, Cox struck a more measured tone as criticism of the project continued to mount. “One of the things people are worried about, and rightfully so, is air quality,” he said in a brief interview as he left the workshop. “That’s a yearlong [permitting] process. … We’re not speeding those up. Those are really important, and we want to make sure that things are done the right way.”
Earlier this month, O’Leary, who was featured on the reality show “Shark Tank,” also seemed to suggest that renewables could help power the Stratos Project. He described other technological advances — such as turbines cooled with air rather than water — before turning to the natural gas power causing a stir.
“We can also put a percentage of the power generation through solar, wind, and batteries, because the battery technology is 10x more efficient than it was just five years ago,” O’Leary posted on X on May 5. “So that’s very helpful, because it makes the cost of energy lower.”
But he stopped short of fully endorsing renewables for his project.
Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and analyst with Utah Clean Energy, calculated that a 9-gigawatt natural gas power plant will produce around 35 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year. By comparison, the entire state of Utah generates 55 million metric tons annually, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. So the Stratos Project could raise Utah’s emissions by about 64 percent.
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“That’s massive,” Mitchell said. But it could be even more, because his estimate didn’t account for “any additional methane leakage” from piping and using the natural gas, he said.
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