Adam Silver and the NBA league office singled out the Utah Jazz among the myriad of tanking teams this season because the way Utah went about it — playing their best players, including Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr., for three quarters then sitting them in the fourth — was bad PR and a black eye for the league. Silver slapped Utah with a $500,000 fine. However, other teams have sat players for extended periods after injuries — or come up with dubious medical reasons to keep them out — and gone untouched.
The Utah Jazz got the message. First came the report that Jackson needed season-ending knee surgery for a non-painful (now) issue. Now comes this:
Center Jusuf Nurkic is going to miss the remainder of the season following surgery to his nose, a story broken by NBA insider Chris Haynes. The Jazz have yet to confirm this, but it tracks and we can expect that on Tuesday or Wednesday.
With Walker Kessler out for the season following shoulder surgery, Nurkic, 31, has stepped into a larger role and is averaging 10.9 points and 10.4 rebounds a game for Utah, although he has not played since the All-Star break.
Without Nurkic out of the rotation, look for more Kyle Filipowski, Kevin Love and Oscar Tshiebwe.
Utah owes its first-round pick this year to Oklahoma City, but it is top-eight protected, which is why the Jazz are tanking — they want to hold on to a high pick in what scouts believe to be an exceptionally deep draft. Utah currently has the sixth-worst record in the NBA and, with that, a 96% chance of retaining its pick. This is the kind of tanking that has NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on a crusade, one that generates a lot of headlines but largely feels misguided and likely will end in "solutions" that don't fix the core issues of improving paths for bad teams to get the kind of elite players needed to turn their fortunes around. Silver is treating the symptom, not the problem, but that's the topic for longer stories coming later in the week here at NBC Sports.