DEVASTATING – Walker Kessler OUT FOR SEASON: What It Means for the Jazz and Their Future

DEVASTATING – Walker Kessler OUT FOR SEASON: What It Means for the Jazz and Their Future

Walker Kesler out for the season. No, it’s not about the contract, but no, there’s also nothing good about it at all. It’s next on Locked on Jazzum. You are Locked on Jazz, your daily podcast on the Utah Jazz, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. How are you? I’m David Lock, radio voice of the Utah Jazz. Jazz NBA insider. This is Locked on Jazz. It’s your daily podcast on the Utah Jazz, giving you insight, expertise, geeky numbers, and hopefully making it way better to be a Jazz fan each and every day. Thank you so much for making Locked On Jazz your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all podcasting apps. And to the everydayers out there, thank you for making Locked On the number one sports podcast network. The Utah Jazz. Sorry, my screen is not the right screen right now. I’m not sure why. So, I have to figure that out. Um, I’ll get I’ll get the li the rundown for you correctly. The Utah Jazz announced yesterday. Uh, what had was not new news actually to kind of you around the team. The players had kind of there wasn’t like this did not have an impact. I guess I’m trying to tell you I don’t think this had an impact on last night’s game. The players, I think, were aware of this. Had been talked about a little bit that Walker was when he went back, he was going to get another opinion and he was going to see people and that there was a real chance that he was going to have to have season ending shoulder surgery. He hurts it last year in the season if you recall. I think he hurts it again, if I have my timing right, on the very first day of training camp this year. Um, talking to some people going for a block shot. Um, and then it happened in the preseason and then happened in the game the other day. And the problem here with this is it was just happening in the regular flow of game. There wasn’t anything from that was taking place that was, oh, that was unique. Won’t happen again. The last time was a loose ball. They’re all running for it. He has his arm up and he gets jostled. Um, and so he has a torn labroom and he will have season ending shoulder surgery. I’ve seen some conversation or question about the contract extension. Um, the fact that Jazz didn’t give him one. Is this Walker’s reaction to it? So, let’s walk through that logically. I think it’s like I I want to I don’t think it has anything to do with the contract. Um, and I’ll explain why, but I do want to take that at validity rather than just dismissing it and like, well, that’s silly. So, the fact is the reason the Jazz didn’t sign Walker to an extension was because they wanted to preserve their cap space, not because they didn’t want Walker. That actually will hold true in the off season. I don’t actually think Walker’s value is going to be hurt in the next period of time by him having shoulder surgery in the eyes of the Utah Jazz. I think they already had their value and they of what he is. The shoulder surgery hurts Walker in the sense if he’d had a massive year this year, then he could have had an opportunity to increase that value and he really didn’t get a chance to do that. So there’s no the the the hurt is not that the the Jazz know who Walker is, know his value, are interested in keeping him and having him. There’ll be a negotiation in the offseason uh that probably won’t be that dramatically different honestly uh than it would have been otherwise. The but what the one scenario that could have changed dramatically would have been Walker has this massive season this year and then is worth more money and able to be holds the Jazz up at that point because he had this massive season. The other scenario that could have happened is that Walker plays through the injury to try to get to that value and then by January or February decides, “Oh, I can’t keep going.” But has a bigger resume and then is out for part of the beginning of next season possibly. If Walker was going to do something to spite the organization based on the contract not being signed, that’s the one where I think he goes and does something of that sort where he plays for a month or two, puts up his numbers knowing he’s going to have to have surgery, and then shuts it down. This actually from a standpoint of the Utah Jazz, there’s nothing good here. Don’t misunderstand. This is you lose one of your young developmental pieces for a season. It’s bad. Okay, I’m not going to try to pretend otherwise. But from a standpoint, the timing is the best for the Utah Jazz. He’s out this season. He’s ready to go next year. You’ve signed him. He’s a part of your future and you move forward. I don’t know who could possibly try to say there’s anything good, but let me I guess what I’m really trying to say is this is bad. Like somehow saying nothing good makes it feel this is bad. Walker Kesler and Keonte George need reps together. Walker Kesler needs reps. Walker Kesler’s getting better every time he gets on the floor. Walker Kesler was a much better player last year than he was the year before. And he was a much better player in the first five games or whatever it was he played this year than he was the year before. And that is really too bad. and Walker and and to not really get a payoff for the amount of work he put in the offseason where he got better yet again. Here’s the one thing that’s very clear about Walker. Okay, Walker gets better every offseason. Walker went through a sophomore slump, but Walker was a much better. work that Walker puts in with the jazz strength and conditioning with Austin and his crew with his own his own people and the jazz people the combination of the two is working and Walker from year two to year three got way better remember I don’t really believe players get much better year one to year two and Walker was way better in year three to year four here so for Walker to only get five games of that and not get to really display it he had a bad night in Sacramento Sacramento should have grabbed a rebound at six turnovers, but other than that, Walker had 22-9, 25- 11, 18 and 12 in his three full games of the year. And the Jazz at the time were the number one team in the league at denying the rim. And Walker had nine block shots in those games. Even in the game in Phoenix where he gets hurt, I think he had 13 rebounds. So, There’s there’s I mean it’s just time and reps and timing and getting used to stuff. And luckily we know Walker works. And so Walker will the Jazz strength and conditioning staff has shown a good job of being able to isolate his lower body will come back. They got to be really careful. You got to be really careful you don’t make his lower body so strong he’s not springy anymore. Guys are kind of either springy or stationary. And Walker’s a little bit of both. It’s a pretty It’s unique and hopefully it holds that. And then the time on the floor is the problem. Honestly, the like Keonte getting to know Keonte George, they have a bad pick and roll combination. One of the major things Walker had to work on this year was to become a better pick and roll big. Walker’s one of the worst statistical pick and roll bigs in the NBA last year. 69th out of 71 with a 87. Now, that also is probably is because our guards aren’t very good last year. Keonte wasn’t very good. Isaiah was also 69th out of 71. Bryce Sensible wasn’t very good. Colin Saxon was probably the best. Keonte George and Walker Kesler needed time together. Isaiah Collier, if he gets back in the rotation, Walt Clayton, whoever it is, and Walker Kesler needed time together. This is where this is bad. Yeah, I get it. Like there’s the Okay, well, you know, we’re not really necessarily in the hunt for anything this year. And this, you know, we’ll probably lose some games because of this. I I I got it as justification. Walker and Keonte have only run 402 pick and rolls together last year. They needed another 800 this year. Guards need 4,000 pick and rolls before they’re good. Combinations, I don’t know. They probably need 1500 to 2,000. So, it’s really disappointing. It’s disappointing for Walker. It’s disappointing for the Jazz. It’s disappointing for Walker’s development with his teammates. It’s disappointing for our ability to play competitive good basketball games. Frankly, like what the whole premise of the defense this year was built to take away the rim. Like that was we’re going to we’re going to get good at something here and we’re going to deny the rim. It’s literally kind of what the idea was. Okay. And the Jazz in the opening game of the year, and I’ve shared that there might be some scorekeeping issue of this, but this is pretty crazy. Okay, 99th percentile denying the rim against the Clippers. Then 91st against Sacramento, then 95th against Phoenix, then 89th against Portland, and then 81st against Phoenix in a game Walker Leaves, 39th percentile against Charlotte, 93rd percentile against Boston. Remember, Boston takes the fewer shots at the rim, so that’s a Boston issue, not a Jazz. And last night, we’re back down to the 13th percentile. Detroit takes 41% of their shots at the rim last night. We’ve literally gone from allowing 20% of opponent shots at the rim or less to in two of the last three games that Walker allowing 33 and 41% of shots at the rim. And I don’t know what you’re supposed to do about that, but that’s the reality cuz no Walker, they’re not turning back. No Nerk with Nerkage and Kevin Love. No one is saying, “Oh, I can’t get to the cup.” And so we aren’t great on ball defenders. We were trying to corral the not great on ball defenders by having Walker in the middle and build a defensive premise with Walker at the rim, which then we were having a problem that our closeouts were too long this year, but that was what you’re going to have to fix. Now I don’t know what you’re doing. I really do not know what Will Hardy and his staff are supposed to do as a defensive presence. You Nerkish does a lot of things well, but defend has never been one of them. particularly drop coverage in the pick and roll, but also he’s so big and it’s lumbering. It’s not great to have him blitzing the pick and roll the way we have. So, I this is tough. I’m not trying to like usually I come on here and my my goal is to kind of be a little bit of like, hey, here’s but there have been a few times where I just had to tell the truth. Like, I’m telling the truth tonight. This is this is today. This is bad. I just have no idea how we defend. We weren’t great beforehand, but we’ve now three of our last four games have been below average. Charlotte, who’s not a good offensive team, had a 126 offensive rating, which put us in the 17th percentile. Detroit, which is not a good offensive team, was in the 46%. We are in the was it they were above average last night. They’re not an above average offensive team. We’re probably not an above average defense anymore. So, that’s why that happens. So, too bad. And maybe the most too bad is that everyone’s worked their asses off, players, coaches, everything to build this. And it kind of just got thrown out the window. We’ll proceed. We can’t go home. We can’t call it quits. But it’s a real gut punch for the players and coaches who’ve been working hard to try to build a system and have it play. and now it’s not there. And this league is brutal. Scouting catches up with you and exposes and takes things away. And we’re seeing that on the other side of the ball, which we’ll talk about next on Locked on Jazz. Today’s edition of Locked on Jazz from the beautiful confines of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I actually have an office. I have a I have a desk today. I’m so happy. is brought to you by Gusto. I think I me I think I mentioned this yesterday on the show. Gusto was a company that we actually used at lockdown when we first started. So, it’s very fun to have them as an advertiser. Um, no one starts a business. I certainly didn’t for the joy of calculating tax withholdings and managing payroll and spreadsheets. So, you go hire you take that’s why you’re bringing in Gusto. 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And thank you for making Locked On your the number one sports podcast network. For those of you who are watching on video, it’s pretty funny. I My shirt like camouflages to the curtains. Um it’s almost like it was just a talking head here. It’s like I blue green screened myself. Um, this league is incredible because and I’m always amazed by it was last year we talked about this a lot with Philip Powski. Like at this point last year, if I remember correctly, Kyle has a bunch of good games and gets kind of hot and then we’re within like two games, the league has adapted and is taking it away from him and it’s incredible. The Jazz, it feels to me, came out, Will Hardy came out with a unique, interesting offense this year and teams are adjusting pretty quickly. So, maybe I’m wrong, but let’s walk through it. Here’s what’s happening. The Jazz offball screening action, double staggers, getting Lowry free really were different and surprised the Clippers and Sacramento to start the year. And the Jazz on those CH plays had were 1.05 per chance. And if you actually go direct where they made a playoff, it was even better. But 1.05. And so the Jazz came out, they ran 100 screens against the Clippers and 106 against Sacramento. And then they ran 112 against Phoenix. And the Jazz were not very good in the in the screens off in the Phoenix game actually. So they went from 1.04 points per chance to 1.05 points per chance. Both very very good. I know a lot of numbers coming here, but you guys have learned how to deal with me on numbers. And I’ll give you the conclusion in them. In the third game, we ran 112 screens, the most we’ve run in any game all year. And we actually were down to 0 81. So, it was just call it a bad night. Didn’t work. But Portland came in and played this incredible pressure defense and got into our guys and blew it up. And we only got 45 offball screens. the entire game. Then we played Phoenix a second time. So now they know what’s coming. They play a second time and we had the worst screening day of the year. We said 104 offball screens and we averaged.77 points per chance. So we just went from 1.05 5 against Sacramento and LA to.77 by the fifth game of the year. And now teams know it’s coming. Charlotte held we we’ve run 97 picks against Charlotte, 89 against Boston, and yesterday a pressure defense similar to Portland. We only got 67. So if you want to get us out of our screening action, you pressure our guards and they can’t. We don’t get into it. We aren’t. That’s the first thing. Phoenix doesn’t play that pressure defense. We were able to get into it 104 times in the last time we played them, but the other teams are now beginning to pressure us and take that away. We’re also not very good at it right now. So, in the second match against Phoenix, we’re 77 points per chance. By the way, just to give you some perspective on this, your off your halfcourt offense should be at about a point of possession. It’s kind of where you want to be. Charlotte, we were 86. Boston, we were 0.91. Last night, we were60. Detroit very physical, very good defensively, fourth best defensive team in the league. But they Lowry couldn’t get free at all. And they completely took us out of what we wanted to run in that stuff. If we go to handoffs, which is kind of part two of our offense, like if the offball screens aren’t there, we want to play a handoff game. We have not had our handoffs reduced at all. We’ve just had our handoff success reduced. So against the Clippers in Sacramento, we were kind of back up there at 1.2 points per game, kind of rounding. Then Phoenix, we’re at one. Then Portland pressures, we were 0.93. In the second game against Phoenix, and I think this is important, in the second game against Phoenix, they’ve now scouted us. They’ve played us a second time. We are 0.58. Brutal. Like your handoff game is dead. Charlotte 65, better against Boston.92. And last night against Detroit 72. So, my take on this is that Will Hardy and the coaching staff came with this pretty unique offensive game to start the year playing very differently than the rest of the NBA. and we surprise people, but this league reacts so fast that here we are three or four games into the se, you know, once we were three or four games in the season, games five, six, seven, eight, they’ve reacted. The other thing I would tell you is we’re now running more pick and rolls we’ve run before. Boston were pretty good at last night, our pick and roll offense was just non-existent. I mean, brutal. And Detroit’s the number one team in the league against the pick and roll. So probably not surprising. The problem here is the scouting is out. They know what we’re doing. This then forces you. So what do you do? Like you have the premise to this. You try to find like if they’re going to top block Lowry, you’re back cutting. If they’re going to do this, you’re doing that. Like there’s an you try to find answers. Teams are doing something on the double stagger where the second guy is actually top blocking, not the first, not the primary defender. It’s interesting. teams are really creative in what they’re doing defensively. Honestly, that’s kind of what when I rewatch our games right now, I’m pretty impressed by for everyone wants to say the, you know, the leagues this like guys. Actually, I don’t know who’s going to play, but the the defensive game plans are pretty impressive and they’re altering and they’re changing things up. And so the most impressive thing that I’ve noticed that jumps out to me on this is that these these defenses are so creative. What eventually happens in this league is you just have to make plays. Who’s out there that can help our guys make plays? Let’s talk about that next on Locked on Jazz. Thanks so much for tuning in to Locked on Jazz today, the Thursday edition of Locked on Jazz. I want to thank our sponsor FanDuel for being Oh, sorry, I went too early. Uh, I want special thanks to our sponsor today, FanDuel. Last night’s Jazz game was interesting. By the way, I think the line was 10 and a half and I think the two free throws late pushed it one way or the other. Craziness that adds a little excitement and juice and fun to the night. With FanDuel, you can get in part of the action. And right now, if you’re a new customer and you bet $5, you get $300 in bonus bets. If you win your first bet, the NBA’s back. No better place to get in the action than FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you miss the start of a game or want to ride the hot hand, FanDuel has live bets on everything from who will score next to fourth quarter comebacks. Plus, you can even combine your live bets in the same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. It gets keeps every game exciting, especially when your team’s making that late push or last night. Right now, FanDuel is giving customers, I mentioned, new customers $300 in bonus bets when you get your first $ five dollar bet win. So head to fanduel.com to sign up and play your game with FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of Locked On NFL action tonight. What’s the line on that one? I know I think the Broncos are playing, aren’t they? Isn’t everybody all fired up because the Broncos Raiders? Isn’t that what it is? Broncos are an eight and a half point favorite. Uh Jackson Dart, by the way, is a 4 and a half point dog against Caleb Williams and the Bears this weekend. So, check that NBA action tonight. Clippers and the Suns battle. The Suns are favored over the Clippers. That’s sure interesting. Uh Boston goes to Orlando where Orlando’s a five-point favorite. Rockets are two-point favorite against San Antonio who’s playing on a back end of a backtoback after losing. Oh, no. That’s Friday. Never mind. That’s Friday. Do we really only have like one game on our schedule tonight? Yeah. Clippers Phoenix is the only game tonight. Interesting things I did not know. That’s all brought to you by FanDuel. So, who can help Lowry Markin and Keonte George? Because that was abundantly clear last night is that they need help. I don’t know. And this is a little bit where even Walker, who’s not a great offensive player, comes into this because Nerk is just not a rolling big and he’s a notoriously poor rim finisher. So, I don’t think you’re playing pick and roll with Yousef Nerkach on the roll. He’s always been a fairly high usage player. It’s not like he’s not going to get his shots, but like right now for big men, he’s fourth in the N fourth percentile in the NBA in points per shot. This is not necessarily a new thing. Yousef has never been an efficient offensive player. He was 32nd percentile last year with Charlotte, 25th with Phoenix, 26th with Phoenix the year before. Even when playing with the best pick and roll guard in the NBA in Dame, he was 43rd, 46th, 30th, 46th, 39th percentile in points per shot. So below average to his position. That’s to his position. And he’s not a very good rim finisher. He does a lot of things really well. He’s a hell of a rebounder. He had like 70 of them last night, but he’s not a good rim finisher. So I the the pick and roll game that we’re like this is even more on like the bad part of Walker’s injuries. Like one of the most important things this year is Keyy’s continual development. I showed yesterday if you follow me on Twitter that he’s like following the path of like some of the best guards in the NBA. But Kei needs to run 1500 2,000 pick and rolls this year. We can all decide that league away from pick and roll. Still like everyone’s still running at least 50 60 a game. So, we still need Keiante to go run 1,500 2,000 pick and rolls this year so that he gets he has no one to run the pick and roll with. Um, and that’s that’s really a bummer. Really a bummer. And so I don’t know where the Jazz have a chance to relieve the offensive burden on Keonte and Lowry as scouting reports out because it’s now kind of into this thing of like guys will get you. They they’ve kind of figured out and um sorry I just got a call from somebody important and had to tell them I’m recording. We’ll call him five. Um, like let’s look at our offense. By the way, we were in the 98th percentile on opening night against the Clippers. We did not have a good offensive game against Sacramento. We were great against Phoenix and Portland. We’ve been here’s the percentile offensive performance we’ve had in our last four games. Third percentile, 10th percentile, 29th percentile, and 8th percentile. And it’s really our shooting, our offensive rebound since Walker’s gone out has only been good in one of those games against Boston. And we’ve gotten much better at taking care of the ball. But our shooting’s been in the fifth percentile, the fourth percentile, the 28th percentile, and the fifth percentile. Our effective field goal percentage has been 45%. Literally the number 45% in three of our last five, four games. I I don’t know how we helped Keonte and Lowry right now without Walker. Um Mahuk had 28 last night. I don’t think we rely on that. Taylor’s not ready to make plays. Ace is showing flashers. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow. Kind of leave in some Ace Bailey talk for tomorrow. Um, Kyle’s not ready to be like an offensive force. Walt, the world is flying by him. I thought he was pretty good last two nights. Six assists last night was good. Thought ace was better last night, too. Like, I don’t, you know, Bryce Sensah is probably the best shooter and having a hard time getting on the floor on a team that needs to shoot. That tells you what you That says a lot. Hopefully Bryce gets going here. But it’s interesting like Nerk as a sec. This is the other thing that happens with the Walker injury. Nerk as a backup big is really good and you could feel it when he was on the floor. He was having a massive I mean he had a massive night last night 17 rebounds but you could really feel how big an impact he has on the game as a back at this age at 32 years old as a backup big with his experience against younger guys with his strength and his really good as a starting center like there’s not a lot of nights on this schedule anymore where you’re going to say like okay the Jazz have Ysef Nerkich and Detroit has Jaylen Duran who has the edge the Jazz have Ysef Nerkitch So Timberwolves have Rudy Gobear who has the edge. Indiana we coming up we’ll probably have it if I I don’t even know who they’re starting center because they’re so injured but Miami has BAM on a bayou like yeah like nope we did against Boston right Ysef Nerkich had an advantage over Kada so there’s a few maybe Portland ironically enough where he start his career he’s ahead of clinging right now but there aren’t a lot but when he was a backup every night you had that edge every tonight. Kevin loves doing the best he can, facilitating, doing a lot of things, but obviously he’s on the back end of a Hall of Fame career. So, it’s a tough day and it’s we got to remember it a little bit in context of what was already designed to be a tough season. Like, there’s a lot of like our if we’re a pilot and we’re on the like looking at the tailings, the wind tailings we have right now, they’re they’re not pointed in great directions, right? Defensively, we’re just not don’t have the same fundamental game plan. Offensively, we’re seeing people scout us a little bit. It’s hard right now. We’ll see what they I mean, Will’s been brilliant 10 games into every year at kind of adjusting and altering what’s going on. And if you actually go back and look at every year with Will Hardy, we’re 10 games in and then we adjust and get better the next 10. So, we’re getting close to that. We’ll see what he does this time. All right. We’ll get ready for Minnesota. Is a weird four and four tomorrow. We’ll talk some more about Ace Bailey tomorrow and we’ll do Ask LJ. That’s all coming up on tomorrow’s edition of Locked on Jazz. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Thanks for being in every day. Thank you. Uh, Amazon Fire TV Stick is working on the SCG Plus. Thank you for all that relayed that to me. Thank you for the people who told us about the Google TV thing that’s working. So, if you’re watching SCG Plus or Jazz Plus and you flip the stream over to radio and you’re having experience, please let me know what good, bad, how it is, how it works so that we can help you fix that and get it better for you. Super thank you for doing that. Uh it’s really cool the streaming staff to put that together. It is all on Locked on Jazz. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We’ll be back with you tomorrow from Minneapolis. Now we send you the first ever 247 national NBA channel locked on NBA. And check out locked on NBA game night after every cover every game every

Walker Kessler faces season-ending shoulder surgery, shaking up the Utah Jazz’s plans. David Locke, radio voice of the Utah Jazz and Jazz NBA Insider, breaks down the impact of losing Kessler not just on the court, but on the team’s defensive identity and young player development. Locke outlines how Kessler’s absence disrupts the Jazz’s rim protection and defensive schemes, spotlighting troubling trends as opponents attack the paint with increasing success. He weighs the long-term ramifications for Kessler’s contract negotiations and explains why this injury is a setback for both the player and franchise, despite the timing arguably being less damaging to Kessler’s future value.

The episode analyzes how Kessler’s injury strains Utah’s offensive game plan, with key players Lowry Markkanen and Keyonte George needing help as scouting reports stymie their early-season success. Locke scrutinizes Yusuf Nurkic’s limitations as a rolling big and questions who can relieve the offensive burden when handoff and off-ball screening actions falter against aggressive defenses. The discussion highlights the importance of pick-and-roll chemistry and reps, emphasizing that Walker Kessler’s development alongside George is crucial for the Jazz’s evolution. With team adjustments looming, Locke asks: Can the Utah Jazz find answers as scouting catches up, or will the loss of Walker Kessler redefine their competitive prospects this season?

00:00 “Utah Jazz: Walker’s Surgery Update”
03:09 Walker’s Injury Impact on Jazz
06:48 Walker Kessler’s Growing Impact
10:42 Defensive Struggles and Fixes
15:26 Jazz Screening Impact and Success
18:13 Offensive Challenges and Adjustments
20:29 Creative Defenses in the NBA
24:00 Jusuf Nurkic’s Offensive Struggles
28:09 Nurkic’s Impact as Backup Big

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