I distinctly remember the 2022-23 Utah Jazz, the first season for current Head Coach Will Hardy, starting out the season 10-3, with Lauri Markkanen and Jordan Clarkson leading the recently blown-up roster that, for the first time in half a decade, did not feature Donovan Mitchell or Rudy Gobert. There were conversations in NBA media — on podcasts, in blogs, in my college dining hall (NBA media is everywhere) — about if the Jazz would be able to tank properly, as they clearly had planned to coming into the season. Maybe Hardy was just too good a coach; maybe this would be a mid-2010s Celtics situation with Brad Stevens and that weird Jeff Green and Avery Bradley team, when it became clear that they had to compete because tanking was just off the table. Danny Ainge ran that team, and Danny Ainge runs this team. It was all lining up.

Nope! They figured out how to tank just fine. Hardy got his ducks in a row, and successfully tanked not just for the rest of 2022-23, but for 2024, 2025 and 2026, making the Jazz, by my calculation, the only team other than The Process 76ers that has unapologetically tanked for four consecutive seasons. And they get one-fifth the hate they deserve for it.

But they might be getting all the karma. The 2026-27 Jazz have kicked off their first USDA-certified “not tanking” campaign by going 1-11 in their first 12 games. Their single win was a one-point home victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, a disasterclass in their own right, and have since ripped off 10 straight losses despite finally putting out a roster that looks like it could do something other than intentionally lose.

Maybe they’re just tanking again. Maybe Will Hardy, who coached zero winning seasons on his first contract but still signed a contract extension through 2031, will coach through all nine years of both contracts and maintain his illustrious .326 career winning percentage. Has all this tanking been for nothing? Has all this glorious “development” wrought by a half-decade so disgusting that the NBA had to change its lottery rules resulted in … this? Is the team really just injured? Are they actually tanking again? Or do they just suck?

Their main “hey we’re actually trying now” acquisition was Jaren Jackson Jr., who promptly tore his MCL and will be out 6-8 weeks from October 27, but the team isn’t bad enough on paper for that to fully explain what’s going on. Their roster has lots of premium talent … on paper, but that talent simply hasn’t translated to wins at any point in the last four years or in the first 10 games of this season. Their efficiency is horrendous, 28th in team shooting percentage, but look closer: they’re 29th in offensive rating, 29th in true shooting percentage and 29th in effective field goal percentage. Don’t know (or don’t care) what any of that means? Also fine! Their team point differential is currently -11.5, which is WORSE THAN LAST YEAR when it was -8.4. They were 22-60 last year.

Are any of these first-round picks actually going to pan out? Thus far, I have no clue if Keyonte George can put up numbers on any kind of good team, and top-10 picks Cody Williams and Taylor Hendricks never returned on their draft slots, the latter perhaps due to a horrific injury before his career ever got off the ground that wasn’t anybody’s fault. But you don’t get infinite shots at this, and Ace Bailey and Darryn Peterson must be elite players if the Jazz want to be anything more than a mediocre home for 90-second, not-even-that-cool Lauri Markkanan/Keyonte George highlight videos.

Perhaps Utah is just the NBA example of my rookie quarterback theory in the NFL of “you either have it or you don’t,” in that I don’t really care if a guy sits behind some veteran starter for a year or if he starts immediately; those who advocate for QBs sitting a year are simply hiding behind an undefeatable Catch-22, in which (stay with me now) successful QBs that sit must have succeeded because they sat … and unsuccessful QBs who didn’t sit should have sat … while unsuccessful QBs who sat were just always going to be bad. I reject this notion, and declare that all good QBs were always going to be good and all bad QBs were always going to be bad. Maybe the four years of horrendous Utah Jazz basketball were just evidence that they were always going to be bad.

Because truly, we had no evidence in the last four seasons that a Lauri Markkanan-captained team was a winning basketball team. He’s a fine player, but he’s inefficient and a big man who doesn’t really rebound or protect the rim or rebound while his 3-point numbers have deteriorated the last two seasons. And none of the basketball he’s played in his entire career has mattered. Ever. You’ll struggle to find the “playoffs” tab on his basketball reference page, because it doesn’t exist. Not in Chicago, nor Cleveland nor Utah — Markkanan has never appeared in a playoff game.

Institutionalized losing does things to players. It torpedoed an entire generation of 76ers draft picks, teaching them that playing was optional and winning was not the goal. Building was the goal, like they were simulating through an NBA2K MyLeague and could just keep getting better forever until they win the NBA Finals because the game’s code says they should. That’s not how the real world works. I’m worried the Jazz have four popped tires, a busted-up engine and no tail lights; they don’t even realize it, and just merged onto the highway.

I wanted this team to be good. I loved Peterson in the draft and would have taken him number one, but this team is awful. Legitimately awful, and somebody better yank the steering wheel and course-correct soon. Otherwise … uh, they’ll have officially tanked for longer than The Process 76ers. Not a record you want to have.