Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Counting Lauri Markkanen’s points and dribbles

Lauri Markkanen is now a top-five scorer in the NBA.

His 30.6 points per game average — after a week in which he scored 35, 40, and 47 — ranks behind only Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Tyrese Maxey. And for those keeping track at home, Markkanen’s one spot ahead of the player he was traded for: Donovan Mitchell, who’s now at a measly 30.4 points per game.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen (23) as the Utah Jazz host the Phoenix Suns, NBA basketball in Salt Lake City on Monday, Oct. 27 2025.

It’s not that Markkanen is really doing anything different than he did in his first two years in Utah: He’s making 55% of his twos and 39% of his threes, just as he did then. And 10% of his shots are still dunks.

Really, the biggest change is just how often the Jazz are force-feeding those shots to him. Head coach Will Hardy’s playcalling is nearly full-blown Markkanen now. Credit should also go to players elsewhere in the Jazz’s starting lineup developing — looking at you, Keyonte George — who have found that getting Markkanen looks is the most efficient way to score overall.

That’s all meant that Markkanen’s scoring 30 in a way essentially unlike any player we see elsewhere in the league. Here are the league’s top 25 scorers to this point, scatter-plotted by points and dribbles per game.

Markkanen’s dribbling the ball about eight times fewer than the Lukas, Hardens, Cades, and Shais of the world, which makes sense; they’re guards. But usually, even bigs who score this much need to dribble about two to four times as often as Markkanen, bigs like Jokic, Wembanyama, or Pascal Siakam.

But it’s not totally unprecedented in the modern era, since we’ve counted dribbles (so since the 2013-14 season). Two Minnesota bigs, Kevin Love and Karl-Anthony Towns, dribbled just about as often or even less than Markkanen. (In Love’s 2013-14 season, he recorded just 37 dribbles per game.) Kristaps Porzingis deserves a shoutout as well as another non-dribbler.

No one has ever scored 30 points per game dribbling this little, though. I don’t think I foresee Markkanen keeping this 30-point average all year long, and I do think he’ll run into better defenses this week coming up.

That he’s even making it a conversation is a huge credit, though. He’s such a good, fun player.

2. Where the Jazz fit in an unusual ’25-26 season

Statistician Neil Paine had a great post on his Substack Monday, looking at just how warped the early part of this 2025-26 season is.

What does he mean by warped? Well, more than in any year prior, the good teams are great, and the bad teams are bad. We’re seeing more blowouts than ever before, for example.

(https://neilpaine.substack.com/p/the-2025-26-nba-is-warped-beyond)

And the teams at the edges are having years that are outlierly good and outlierly bad. So, for example, take the Jazz: They rank as the 23rd-worst team in the NBA through their first 13 games. Their -5.4 point differential through those games would rank dead last among 23rd-ranked teams in the last 20 years of play.

It turns out the same is true across the rest of the NBA’s basement. As Paine put it, “the bottom 10 teams in the NBA this season are almost uniformly the worst teams in the 30-team era for their leaguewide ranking, all at once.”

How does this impact the Jazz? Well, in a normal year, you could be relatively confident that Utah, despite some early season close wins, would likely see its way to the bottom based on the point differential. As a minus-five team, they’d be favored to keep their first-round pick if it were top-8 protected.

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz forward/center Kevin Love (42) gestures after a play during the game between the Utah Jazz and the Minnesota Timberwolves at Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Monday, Nov. 10, 2025.

This year? The Jazz have to push below some really weirdly bad teams. Are we sure Dallas, Memphis, Indiana, Sacramento, and the Clippers are better than the Jazz? They haven’t shown it so far — and their incentive to tank out the season only grows with each passing day. And on the other hand, I am pretty sure that the Jazz are better than Brooklyn, Washington, and New Orleans.

I still think it probably works out for the Jazz to be able to push for wins this season but still lose enough to keep the pick. But I’m not as confident in this plan as I was a month ago.

3. Talking Frank Layden

Sunday night’s game celebrated late Jazz head coach Frank Layden’s life and career. There was a presentation during the second quarter, a couple of videos, an SEG+ alt-cast, and the invitation of his family to the game.

I’ve made the case before and I’ll make it again that Layden is the most important figure in Jazz history. He, more than anyone else, kept the Jazz here in Utah when they were financially struggling through sheer force of will — begging people to buy tickets, interacting with the community in a way no coach had before and none have done since. In his role as general manager, he drafted John Stockton and Karl Malone. And he handpicked his successor, even resigning midseason to ensure Jerry Sloan would coach the Jazz.

From 1982 through 2011, for 30 years there, Layden’s fingerprints were all over the team. Even now, Will Hardy says he’s an inspirational figure.

“His disposition is one that you don’t see a lot of, where he’s obviously incredibly smart, very competitive, but he did it all with a smile on his face,” Hardy said.

It was fitting that the celebration came in the Jazz’s annual home game against the Chicago Bulls. First, there’s an incredible connection there from coach to coach — Layden coached both Billy Donovan’s father at St. Agnes Cathedral High School in New York, then coached Donovan himself when the Jazz drafted him in 1982. (Donovan was drafted in the third round and waived before the season began.)

“I loved Coach Layden,” Donovan said Sunday. “He was the funniest coach I’ve been around.”

Even after departing the organization officially, Layden loved the Jazz until his death. “We stayed up many nights right to the end and followed the team, and he was the team’s biggest supporter,” his son, Scott, said.

And like many Jazz fans, there were some bits of Bulls hagiography he never wanted a part in. While Layden watched too many Jazz games to count at the end, he never watched “The Last Dance.”

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