Jazz's Lauri Markkanen Gets Real on Tanking Among NBA Teams

The Utah Jazz are in an interesting place during a turbulent 2024-25 NBA campaign. The team has gotten off to one of their worst starts in franchise history, suffering from a 10-32 record to sink them toward the bottom of the Western Conference standings.

They have a young roster on board, a bevy of draft picks for this summer and onwards, and have your typical look of a rebuilding, borderline tanking team in the NBA.

But with those lowly expectations come problems, one of which being the simple fact that players don't like to lose-- and they especially aren't a fan of tanking. The Jazz and their players are no different, as anyone taking the floor during an NBA game is likely playing to compete and win.

Jazz star Lauri Markkanen recently had some interesting comments on The Salt Lake Tribune revolving around his thoughts on teams tanking around the league. While he's not the biggest supporter of the concept, he understands the business.

“I don’t think losing, or purposefully losing, should be part of professional sports," Markkanen said. "I feel like athletes always want to compete. I understand why some organizations around the NBA are doing it, but I feel like it sucks, in my opinion. There should be a better way to build rosters. That’s the way it’s been, so I understand it, but that’s my opinion.”

And when it comes to losing, the Jazz and Markkanen have seen a significant amount of that in Salt Lake City this season. Utah currently has the second-worst win-loss in the entire NBA through half the year, and currently lie on a five-game losing streak during their latest stretch of games.

From the Jazz front office's point of view, this was the ultimate expectation and hope for how this season would go. But as for Markkanen, and every other player on Utah's roster, this isn't how you want to go about your seasons.

And as Utah gears up for their fourth-straight losing season and missed playoff appearance, the hope around this roster will be to get the operation back on track sooner rather than later.

Thankfully, as this season comes to a close, the Jazz will likely be right in the mix for one of this year's top prospects in a class that expects to be one of the better groups of young players in recent memory-- including names like Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper, and Ace Bailey. With that, the hope is that Utah can keep pushing forward up the mountain to land back into contention, but only time will tell if that's how the cards fall.

In the meantime, Jazz fans and players need to buckle up for a season that will likely continue down the dark path that we've seen across these initial months.

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