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Jordan Clarkson has always been an electrifying offensive playmaker who can take over games for extended stretches off the bench.
But he’s about to be something else for the Utah Jazz during the 2024-25 season.
“I’m just trying to put my experience out there for the younger guys,” he told Bleacher Report when discussing taking on more of a veteran leadership role during the upcoming campaign. “This is the most vocal I’ve been since I’ve played in terms of getting as much information to them as I can during the preseason as we get ready for the regular season.
“I’m trying to get them all ready. This is my first time being one of the older guys on the team, usually there are guys who are older than me who take on that role. But I’m stepping into that, and it’s something new. I’m trying to communicate the best way I can with everybody.”
Clarkson, who is signed through the 2025-26 season, is assuming such a role as the longest-tenured member of the Jazz. While he played for the Los Angeles Lakers and Cleveland Cavaliers earlier in his career, he’s been with Utah since it acquired him from Cleveland via trade in December 2019.
The guard has been through different iterations of the team and played with the likes of Donovan Mitchell, Mike Conley and Rudy Gobert, among others, but he is now a go-to option on a younger roster.
He isn’t the only go-to option, though.
Utah’s ceiling likely depends on how well Clarkson and Lauri Markkanen play together this season. This will be Markkanen’s third season with the franchise that helped him unlock the full potential he showed flashes of with the Chicago Bulls and Cavaliers after he was the No. 7 overall pick of the 2017 NBA draft.
Markkanen made his first career All-Star Game in his first season with the Jazz and was excellent again in 2023-24 while averaging 23.2 points and 8.2 rebounds per game and shooting 48 percent from the floor and 39.9 percent from deep.
The big man is a double-double threat every time he steps on the court and is also a walking mismatch because of his ability to score on the blocks or extend his game beyond the arc. He also draws additional attention from defenses, which creates easier looks for teammates such as Clarkson.
“He’s an automatic bucket,” Clarkson said. “When stuff gets a little out of whack, we know who to go to. He’s going to get us an easy one at a high, efficient rate. For me, seeing his growth as he becomes an All-Star has been amazing. I’m just happy to be part of his process in terms of talking to him about how to finish games and the different shots that he’s taking. Just being able to have conversations with a guy like that during this growth process is pretty dope.”
Markkanen, Clarkson, Collin Sexton and John Collins are going to generate headlines in Utah as proven playmakers who are familiar names for NBA fans, but plenty of eyes are on the future for the Western Conference team.
After all, Walker Kessler is entering his third season, while Keyonte George and Taylor Hendricks are entering their second seasons after they were all first-round picks. The Jazz also had two first-rounders in this year’s draft and used them on Cody Williams and Isaiah Collier.
As if that wasn’t enough, they landed Kyle Filipowski in the second round after he was a consensus All-American and walking double-double threat during his time at Duke.
“These young guys have been picking up a lot of stuff,” Clarkson said while highlighting George, Hendricks, Williams and Collier by name. “Kyle Filipowski too, he’s been doing great. It’s been a joy working with all these guys because they’re so humble and so hungry.”
The next step for Clarkson when it comes to bonding with the young players is teaming up with them in Call of Duty.
He partnered with the video game to promote the Oct. 25 launch date of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. While Clarkson hasn’t had the opportunity to mix it up in the game with his current teammates, he said he does still have a Call of Duty based group chat with former teammates Conley, Mitchell and Royce O’Neale.
“This team is super young so I haven’t had as much of a chance to get on Call of Duty with them,” Clarkson said. “I can say on my past teams that Mike Conley, Donovan Mitchell and Kelly Olynyk are the top three guys I played with who are good. Royce O’Neale is pretty solid too. But Mike Conley is probably the best, and Rudy Gobert as well. Those two are up there in terms of teammates that I’ve played with.”
Clarkson will eventually put his video game skills to the test against his new group of teammates off the court while also attempting to lead them to the playoffs on it.
Putting up numbers has never been a problem for the 32-year-old, who averaged double-digit scoring totals in each of his first 10 seasons. He has been an offensive spark plug for the Jazz and is averaging 17.7 points per game during his Utah tenure.
It is a tenure that also saw him take home the Sixth Man of the Year during his first full season with the team in 2020-21 when he showed a willingness to be a difference-maker off the bench. He eventually became a full-time starter in 2022-23 and averaged a career-high 20.8 points per game.
Clarkson started 19 of 55 games last season, showing off the versatility to play whatever role the team needs as someone who can attack off the bounce and hit from the outside. He will need to be a high-volume scorer once again for the Jazz if they are going to surprise and bounce back from two straight playoff-less seasons in a loaded Western Conference.
“Winning another Sixth Man of the Year would be nice,” he said. “But a big goal for me is to help these young guys progress as fast as they can and help us win games. We don’t want to be a losing team, and as long as these younger guys are playing and figuring it out faster, the faster we’re going to get to winning.”
That’s surely exactly what Jazz fans want to hear as the franchise attempts to balance a focus on the future with a desire to win in 2024-25.
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