Three Paths Utah Jazz Can Take After Walker Kessler’s Injury

The Utah Jazz have had an encouraging start to the season, largely thanks to the contributions from Lauri Markkanen, Keyonte George, and fourth-year big man Walker Kessler.

Unfortunately, news broke on Wednesday that Kessler will undergo season-ending surgery to address a torn labrum in his shoulder. The news is a devastating blow to a Jazz team that is looking to progress towards its long-term goals this year after finishing with the worst record in the league last season.

Without Kessler, the Jazz are now extremely thin at the center position, with just veteran big man Jusuf Nurkic a natural at the position.

With that in mind, let’s discuss some options for where the team can go from here.

Kessler has already missed several preseason and early-regular-season games, and in his absence, the team has leaned on Nurkic, who has started over 400 games in his 12-year NBA career. Additionally, the team has turned to Kevin Love, the former NBA champion, to soak up minutes as an undersized center.

Neither offers the rim protection nor the lob threat that was so valuable to making the team function. In fact, both are poor defenders at this point in their careers. Along with that, neither project to be with the team long term, which makes investing big minutes for either less than ideal.

The Jazz have a couple of young options in Kyle Filipowski and Taylor Hendricks, but they both have limitations. Filipowski can execute offensively at a high level while playing the five, but the team bleeds points with his lack of rim protection.

Theoretically, Hendricks could provide more rim protection, but he’s struggled defensively since returning from the devastating ankle injury that all but eliminated his sophomore season. Getting him minutes at center throughout the year could be important, but the Jazz haven’t put him there much.

While less than ideal, the Kessler injury could be beneficial in one way: the team will lose more games and be set up better in the lottery standings, especially if they don’t make a move to bolster their center group.

There are practically no quality NBA centers available on the free agent market. However, the Jazz could look at a few different options for finding a more traditional center.

The most popular, and obvious, would be going down to the G-League and signing former 6th overall pick Mo Bamba, who’s playing for the Salt Lake City Stars and spent training camp with the team.

While he never lived up to the billing of a high lottery pick, Bamba can protect the rim better than any option the team currently has. He can also stretch the floor a bit and has more vertical pop than Nurkic or Love.

The biggest problem here is that the Jazz would have to open up a roster spot to sign Bamba and don’t have any clear candidates to waive.

The last, and least likely, at least in the short term, option is to go out and trade for a quality center.

Now, I doubt they would (or should) trade draft picks or premium assets for a center, given where they’re at in their rebuild. Finding someone who can help the team play how they wanted to with Kessler could be beneficial for the rest of the roster.

For example, Goga Bitadze, Orlando’s backup center, is part of a frontcourt-heavy Magic team and is signed to a team-friendly deal through 2027. He could be a short-term solution at center who wouldn’t impact winning at a level where you’d have to be concerned about impacting your draft pick, and could be a valuable backup going forward. There’s no sense that he’s available for trade at this point, though.

Regardless of what direction the team takes, Kessler’s injury is a massive gut punch. Hopefully, he’s back healthy and clicking on all cylinders next season.

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