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SALT LAKE CITY — Do not bother setting any tangible level of expectations for the Jazz next season. The organization's top two executives will swat away any thought of it.
Speaking at the season-ending press conference this week, Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik deflected several media attempts to pin them down on anything relative to the number of wins next year.
Forget about broaching the possibility of making the playoffs, an achievement that management clearly wasn't interested in this past season. Ainge and Zanik wouldn't even commit to the team improving upon the 37-45 record during Will Hardy's rookie year as a head coach.
They went back to discovery mode, a phrase Zanik used to describe the 2022-23 campaign. Their hesitancy makes sense, accounting for all the variables that go into success.
Discovery mode is an intriguing topic, one that really doesn't evaluate the team's better-than-expected results. If the only purpose was to learn about the coach and players, then the surprising individual performances did nothing to raise the bar going into next season.
But the fact is, the reason virtually all observers rate the season as a success was due to the impressive play from the likes of Lauri Markkanen, rookies Walker Kessler and Ochai Agbaji, along with multiple younger veterans. No matter what, the decision-makers were always going to make discoveries about the season even if nobody played well.
"It was a season of discovery to figure out where they are," Zanik said.
Yeah, but the collective was good enough to at least finish 10th in the Western Conference, which would have put the Jazz in the play-in tournament that precedes the traditional playoff bracket. The deliberate choice to sit out key players over the final month likely was the primary reason the Jazz finished two spots below the cutline.
There's every reason to expect — and from the paying customers' perspective, demand — improvement upon finishing seven games below .500. But the logic fell on deaf ears to the guys in charge.
"Obviously, pleasantly surprised. Most rookies are terrible, so it's a relative bar," Zanik said. "Walker was good, Ochai was good. It gave us something that we knew we could kind of take forward and build."
"To slap a label on, like, this has accelerated it by X years or things like that, we just have more knowledge about what our team is this year," he added. "That's a credit to Will and the staff and players for us to go into this offseason to kind of know what we have and what we're working with."
Immediately after Zanik's remarks, Ainge followed by saying Kessler played well in his role but didn't have to carry heavy responsibilities. He noted there's no guarantees the center or any player will automatically improve simply by age.
Having Kessler and Agbaji on team-friendly rookie contracts allows the Jazz more flexibility in adding high-priced veterans. Depending on player options, most notably Jordan Clarkson, the Jazz could have some $60 million in cap space to add talent to go along with the current three first-round picks this June.
Even more reason to expect improvement to start next season. Oops, there we go again.
"We're not going to be pushed by any timeline," said Zanik, who rightly is focused on making good decisions rather than rushing into anything.
Ainge said it's realistic to avoid setting specific standards for success going forward. But the Jazz, he said, intend to be in the conversation this summer on any game-changing player.
To their credit, Zanik and Ainge took the same, but differently phrased, questions in stride, even if they did snicker sometimes. Turns out owner Ryan Smith already has hit them with the same stuff.
"You guys aren't the only ones asking us when we're going to be good (and) how good we'll be this year," Ainge said. "We get asked that question by Ryan all the time, too. He's anxious to spend his money; we're anxious to spend it."
