After four long years of tanking, things were supposed to be drastically different for the Utah Jazz Wednesday night as they tipped off their 2026-27 season against the Memphis Grizzlies on the road.
With veteran All-Star forwards Jaren Jackson Jr. and Lauri Markkanen on the roster, plus budding star point guard Keyonte George, 2026 No. 2 overall draft pick Darryn Peterson and 2025 No. 5 pick Ace Bailey, the wide expectation is that the Jazz will roughly double their win total of 22 from last season and be in the playoff mix come April.
With that as the backdrop, Wednesday’s opener was an absolute debacle.
Utah led by nine with 43 seconds left in the first quarter, but that advantage was down to just two by the time those 43 seconds expired.
The Grizzlies won the second quarter by 15 and the third quarter by six to take a 19-point lead into the fourth. For good measure, Memphis won the final frame by a point. Add it all up, and the home side came away with a 123-103 victory.
As much as it was a highly disappointing result at the dawn of a new era for the Jazz, perhaps it was not as surprising as it may have appeared on the surface.
When Utah acquired Jackson in February from, coincidentally, the Grizzlies, not only was it a signal that the Jazz front office was ready to quit tanking, but there was an excitement around a jumbo front-court Utah could trot out with him, Markkanen and center Walker Kessler.
Except Kessler went to the Los Angeles Lakers over the summer, and suddenly a Jazz team that was terrible defensively last season (Kessler missed all but five games) lost its defensive anchor and was back to having very little defensive ability on its roster, even if it was going to commit to trying more on that end of the floor this season.
Luka 🤝 Walker pic.twitter.com/ZSAehnoPU3
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) October 22, 2026
Conversely, Utah was primed to be awesome offensively. Markkanen is a great scorer, Jackson can do a lot of things on that end of the floor, George took great strides last season and Peterson could get to the basket or make tough shots in college last season basically whenever he wanted.
Maybe if the Jazz could score a ton of points, they could overcome their defensive woes?
As the preseason unfolded, it was easy to see that such might end up being a challenge. There is only one basketball on the floor at a time in a game, and it looked like Utah might struggle to figure out how to play as a team with as much firepower as is on the roster.
All of this came to a head Wednesday night. Defensively, the 123 points the Jazz gave up formed a number that would have led the NBA last season. They were out-rebounded 55-38, including letting Memphis get 15 offensive rebounds.
Offensively, they scored just 20 points in the second quarter and 24 in the fourth while committing 18 turnovers. All too often, players were unsure what should happen on that end of the floor.
Look, it’s the first game of the season, and Utah is trying to incorporate several new key players and embrace expectations it hasn’t faced at all in Will Hardy’s time as head coach. Growing pains are expected on the journey to becoming a .500-or-better team this season and trying to contend for the playoffs.
But if the Jazz are to meet those goals, not only will they need to be a lot better than they were Wednesday — they will need to overcome flaws on their roster that have been apparent since the beginning of July.