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Team Profile
Utah Jazz: Five things you need to know
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Joe Ingles arrived at the Utah Jazz on a waiver claim and left as their all-time three-point king.
Utah Jazz: the club that turned a waived Australian into a record holder
- Joe Ingles is the Utah Jazz all-time leader in three-pointers made, a record he took from John Stockton.
- Three Australians have played for the Jazz: Ingles, Dante Exum and Patty Mills.
- Utah went 22-60 and took Darryn Peterson with the second pick of the 2026 draft.
In October 2014 the Los Angeles Clippers waived a 27-year-old Australian forward who had never played an NBA game.
Utah picked him up. Eight seasons later Joe Ingles held the franchise record for three-pointers made, a record that had belonged to John Stockton.
That is the story of Australia and the Utah Jazz. The club spent the fifth pick of the 2014 draft on an Australian, Dante Exum, and then got its best Australian four months later for nothing.
Ingles is 38 now and has come home. In May he signed a two-year deal with Melbourne United, back in the NBL 17 years after he left it.
Australians who have played for the Utah Jazz
Joe Ingles is the most important Australian in this franchise's history and one of the best value signings any NBA club has made.
The Adelaide forward had built a career in Europe with Barcelona and Maccabi Tel Aviv before the Clippers waived him in October 2014 without giving him a game. Utah claimed him, and he stayed eight seasons.
He became the club's all-time leader in three-pointers made, passing John Stockton in January 2021, and was a central figure in the Quin Snyder teams built around Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell. The trash talk was part of the appeal. So was the fact that he almost never looked rushed.
Ingles was traded to Portland in February 2022 and signed with Milwaukee that offseason, where he tore an ACL. He rebuilt at Orlando across two stints and finished his NBA career at Minnesota, 12 seasons and five Olympic Games in.
In May 2026, at 38, he signed a two-year deal with Melbourne United, returning to the NBL 17 years after leaving it in 2009 following three seasons with the South Dragons. Barely playing in Minnesota was the reason.
"I knew, deep down, I had that itch to play. We would play pick-up every game day, and I would be competing, I would play really well, I felt really good. I obviously just wasn't getting the minutes with the team we had in Minnesota," Ingles told ESPN's Olgun Uluc.
He got one last look at what he could still do in the final game of the regular season, given 30 minutes against New Orleans with Minnesota's playoff seeding already settled, and produced 15 points and 10 assists.
"To compete and do what I did in that game was kind of like a tick of the box. Like, I know I can still do this," he said.
Dante Exum was the fifth pick of the 2014 draft, the highest an Australian had gone since Andrew Bogut went first in 2005.
The Melbourne guard arrived at 19 with enormous expectations and had them steadily reduced by his body. He played for Utah from 2014 to 2019 and was traded to Cleveland in December 2019. He has since rebuilt a career in Europe and back in the NBA, including a spell at Dallas.
Patty Mills signed a one-year, fully guaranteed deal worth USD $3.3 million with the Jazz in August 2024, one of the last stops of a career that ran past 1000 NBA games.
The Canberra guard had already won a championship with San Antonio in 2014 and played for Brooklyn, Atlanta and Miami before Utah. He now plays for ASVEL in the EuroLeague, reunited with Tony Parker.
2026-27 team snapshot
Utah lost more games than all but one team in the NBA last season and has come out of it with the second pick and a genuinely interesting roster.
The Jazz went 22-60, fifth in the Northwest Division and 15th in the Western Conference. It was a five-game improvement on the 17-65 of the year before. They finished level with Sacramento but lost the tiebreaker on conference record, which handed them the worst mark in the West.
The season turned in February, when Utah traded for Jaren Jackson Jr from Memphis. That is not a rebuilding move. It gave Will Hardy a frontcourt of Jackson, Lauri Markkanen and Walker Kessler, three big men with almost nothing in common stylistically.
Then the lottery landed. Washington took AJ Dybantsa first and Utah used the second pick on Kansas guard Darryn Peterson, an efficient scorer whose freshman season was cut up by injury. Memphis took Cameron Boozer third.
Peterson joins Ace Bailey, the fifth pick of the 2025 draft, in a young core that now has real size around it. Austin Ainge runs basketball operations, Justin Zanik is general manager and Ryan Smith owns the club.
The rebuild has a shape for the first time in four years.
Why the Jazz matter
Every NBA franchise has a story.
The Boston Celtics built a dynasty. The Los Angeles Lakers became basketball's glamour club. The San Antonio Spurs defined sustained excellence.
Utah is the great nearly team.
Twenty consecutive playoff appearances from 1984 to 2004. The best pick-and-roll partnership the sport has produced. Two NBA Finals. No championship. The Jazz spent two decades being excellent and ran into Michael Jordan at the end of it.
For Australian readers it is something narrower and warmer. This is the club that looked at a player nobody else wanted and gave him eight seasons, and got a franchise record out of it.
New Orleans, Salt Lake City and the early years
The franchise entered the NBA in 1974 as the New Orleans Jazz, which is why a team in Utah is named after a musical form with no connection to the state.
Five years in New Orleans produced little. The club moved to Salt Lake City in 1979, kept the name, and took another five years to reach a playoff series. The first came in 1984, and the run that followed did not stop for two decades.
Stockton, Malone and the Jerry Sloan era
Utah drafted John Stockton in 1984 and Karl Malone in 1985, which remains one of the great two-year hauls in draft history.
Jerry Sloan took over as head coach in 1988 and built everything around them. The pick-and-roll they ran was known to every opponent in the league and stopped by almost none of them. Stockton retired as the NBA's all-time leader in both assists and steals. Malone finished as one of the highest scorers the game has produced.
Sloan coached the club for 23 seasons and never won Coach of the Year.
Two Finals and Michael Jordan
Utah reached the NBA Finals in 1997 and again in 1998.
Chicago won both, in six games each time. The 1998 series ended with Jordan's shot over Bryon Russell in Game 6 at the Delta Center, one of the most replayed moments in the sport, and the closest the Jazz have come to a championship.
Stockton retired in 2003. Malone left for the Lakers the same offseason, chasing the ring he never got in Utah.
Gobert, Mitchell and the teardown
The next serious Utah team arrived under Quin Snyder.
Rudy Gobert anchored a defence that made him a three-time Defensive Player of the Year. Donovan Mitchell arrived in 2017 and gave the club a scorer. Joe Ingles was the connective tissue, and the Jazz won 52 games in 2020-21 with the best record in the league.
It never converted into a deep playoff run. Both stars were traded in 2022 and Utah began the rebuild that has only now produced a plan.
The greatest Jazz players of all time
John Stockton is the greatest Jazz player and holds records in assists and steals that look unbreakable.
Karl Malone is the greatest scorer in franchise history and one of the most durable players the league has had.
Pete Maravich brought the flair in the New Orleans years and still holds the franchise scoring average record.
Adrian Dantley, Deron Williams, Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell each defined a period of Jazz basketball.
And Joe Ingles holds a franchise record that he took from Stockton himself, which is not a bad line for a player who arrived on a waiver claim.
Five Fast Facts
1. Joe Ingles is the Utah Jazz all-time leader in three-pointers made, passing John Stockton in January 2021.
2. Utah claimed Ingles off waivers in October 2014, four months after drafting Dante Exum fifth overall.
3. The Jazz have never won an NBA championship, losing the Finals to Chicago in both 1997 and 1998.
4. John Stockton is the NBA's all-time leader in both assists and steals.
5. The team is named after New Orleans, where the franchise began in 1974 before moving to Utah in 1979.
Historical Timeline
- 1974: The franchise enters the NBA as the New Orleans Jazz.
- 1979: Relocate to Salt Lake City and keep the name.
- 1984: Draft John Stockton and make a first playoff appearance.
- 1985: Draft Karl Malone.
- 1988: Jerry Sloan becomes head coach.
- 1997: Reach a first NBA Finals and lose to Chicago in six games.
- 1998: Return to the Finals and lose to Chicago again.
- 2003: Stockton retires and Malone leaves in free agency.
- 2014: Draft Dante Exum fifth overall and claim Joe Ingles off waivers.
- 2021: Ingles passes Stockton for the club's most three-pointers made.
- 2022: Trade Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell and begin a rebuild.
- 2024: Sign Patty Mills.
- 2026: Finish 22-60 and draft Darryn Peterson with the second pick.
Looking ahead
Utah has spent four years losing on purpose and finally has something to show for it.
Darryn Peterson at pick two, Ace Bailey a year into his career, Jaren Jackson Jr traded in mid-season, and Markkanen and Kessler still there. Will Hardy has more talent than at any point in his tenure and a frontcourt that will take some working out.
The Australian connection has gone quiet. Mills is in the EuroLeague, Exum is elsewhere, and Ingles has gone home to Melbourne United on a two-year deal at 38.
But if you want the single best example of what an Australian can do with an NBA opportunity nobody else wanted to give, it is here. Waived by one club in October 2014, and eight seasons later holding a record that belonged to John Stockton.
