Starting Five v2.5

Daniel Waddleton

Apr 1, 2026

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This is not an April Fools’ prank. We are actually going to talk about the Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans today.

With the calendar turning to April and the playoffs right around the corner, the annual goodbye tour is here. In exactly two weeks, the play-in tournament tips off, and for a chunk of the league, that means we are done watching them until next fall.

So before the postseason takes over the sport, I wanted to give a proper sendoff to a few teams and players I either genuinely enjoyed watching this season or think are setting up to become much more relevant next year.

Let’s bring out my Starting Five of April goodbyes.

. . .

Ty Jerome - Memphis Grizzlies

Ty Jerome was one of the best stories in the NBA last season. Despite being a first-round pick in 2019, he never really carved out a consistent role in the league. Then in 2024-25, playing under his former Golden State assistant Kenny Atkinson in Cleveland, he finally found his footing as the sixth man for a 64-win Cavaliers team.

In 70 games, Jerome averaged 22.5 points and 6.1 assists per 75 possessions on +5.6 relative true shooting. Cleveland’s offense hummed with him at the controls, posting a 124.2 offensive rating in his minutes. He made our Fast Break Forum Non-All-Star Team, then cashed in with a three-year, $28 million deal from Memphis, a number that probably would have been even higher had he played a little better in the postseason against Indiana.

And despite how messy this Grizzlies season became, Jerome picked up right where he left off.

He missed the first 46 games, and by the time he returned, Memphis barely resembled the team he had signed with. Still, once he got back on the floor, he produced at a very high level, averaging 19.7 points and 5.7 assists per game on 61.6 percent true shooting. His per-75 numbers jump all the way to 31.6 points and 9.3 assists.

Even more impressively, Jerome is set to finish third in offensive EPM, trailing only Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, while sitting ahead of names like Luka Doncic and Kawhi Leonard. Is he THAT level offensive player? No. But it does tell you something important: in his 20-to-25-minute role, he has become an ultra-effective lead guard. Even on a depleted Memphis team, the Grizzlies still posted a 121.1 offensive rating in his minutes, and Jerome led the league per 75 possessions in points created by scoring or assisting at 54.5, just baley edging out offensive savant Nikola Jokic.

I’d make the argument Jerome is one of the most underrated pick-and-roll operators in basketball. He generated 1.165 points per possession as a pick-and-roll ball-handler including passes, which is excellent, even in a smaller sample. He simply just slices defenses apart with his combination of pace, shooting, touch, and decision-making.

Whether he stays in Memphis or a smart team trades for him, I’ll be excited to see Jerome get a full runway from opening night next season. He's clear cut one of my favorite under-the-radar players in the league.

. . .

Ryan Rollins - Milwaukee Bucks

It feels like a formality at this point that Giannis Antetokounmpo will finally be traded this offseason, and depending on what the return package looks like, you could make the case Ryan Rollins heads into next season as the most impactful player on Milwaukee’s roster.

If you read this page, you know I was skeptical of the Bucks coming into this year. But Rollins was one of the few reasons I kept them on my radar. He had shown flashes when given the chance last season, and with Damian Lillard waived and stretched, it felt like the runway was there for a breakout.

That is exactly what happened.

The 23-year-old is wrapping up the year averaging 17.1 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 5.6 assists on 58.1 percent true shooting while knocking down 40 percent of his threes on six attempts per game.

The team success didn't follow, but that was not an indictment of Rollins. Milwaukee was 9.2 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor, and for a 30-45 team, posting a -2.8 net rating across his 4,600 possessions is more respectable than it looks on the surface.

According to the Thinking Basketball database, Rollins carried a 38.8 offensive load this season, an 81st percentile mark and one of the biggest year-to-year jumps in the league. He handled a heavy dose of pick-and-roll for a roster badly deprived of ball handling and playmaking, especially with Giannis sidelined for a big chunk of the year. Despite that jump in usage, he stayed efficient, generating 1.006 points per possession on his pick-and-roll possessions including passes. That may not be elite, but it is very good, especially for a young guard taking on a totally new burden.

And when you watch the film, it's very encouraging. He has a natural comfort operating in ball screens, which makes me think this is only the beginning of the ascent.

He can also play off the ball as an effective spot-up shooter and hold up defensively both at the point of attack and in chaser assignments. He is the kind of player winning teams always seem to have, and at just 24-years-old next season with a $4 million cap hit, Rollins feels like someone who will be a big part of Milwaukee’s next era, whatever that ends up looking like.

. . .

Utah Jazz

The last time the Jazz made the postseason was 2021-22, the final chapter of the Donovan Mitchell-Rudy Gobert era in Salt Lake City. Since then, the franchise that ripped off six straight playoff appearances -- including three 50-win seasons -- has spent the last four years wandering through the rebuild wilderness.

A 106-216 record over that stretch is ugly no matter how you frame it. However, a lot of it has also felt intentional, which is what makes next season so interesting to me.

I don't think the combination of head coach Will Hardy and this roster has been as bad as that four-year record suggests. When Utah has actually tried to win, I've found myself enjoying their games. The issue has been the higher-ups in this organization have spent the last few years prioritizing lottery positioning over actual win totals, especially late in the season when games are treated as nothing more than extra ping pong balls.

Utah made it pretty clear at this year’s trade deadline that the rebuild phase is ending when it swung big for Jaren Jackson Jr. That is not the kind of move a team makes if it plans to spend another year face-planting into the bottom of the standings. Instead, it's the kind of move a team makes when it believes Phase 2 has arrived.

It starts with the jump Keyonte George took this season, not just in raw production but in efficiency too. If the Jazz believe they have finally found their lead guard after years of searching for the post-Mitchell answer, they can stop treating every draft like a quarterback search.

And from there, they can start building a real team around him.

That begins in the frontcourt, which has become a fascinating group. A Jaren Jackson Jr.-Walker Kessler back line should be enormous and terrifying around the rim. Keeping Lauri Markkanen around through all the trade cycles is about to pay dividends, giving them a go-to scoring wing who can fly around as a giant movement shooter without wasting possessions.

I’ve also really enjoyed the Ace Bailey experience this year. He has started trading long twos for more threes, begun pairing his physical tools with a real motor defensively, and shown a willingness to do more offensively than just hunt shots. He's already proven to be a player to be taken serious in this league, with the upside for more.

And there is still one more major draft pick coming in what looks like a loaded class. Whether it is a top-end talent with some lottery luck or just another strong backcourt/wing fit, Utah is going to get one more shot to add a little more juice before this thing really tries to take off.

I love Will Hardy as a coach. I think he has been dealt a weird hand over the last few years and still done a really good job building an offensive environment that gives players room to grow. Now that the organization’s full focus appears to be on winning games again, here is the bold prediction: Utah gets back to the postseason, and Hardy finishes top three in Coach of the Year voting in 2026-27.

. . .

Trey Murphy III - Hopefully Another Team

A few years ago, Trey Murphy was one of those consensus-loved players in NBA discourse to project upward. Long, rangy wing. Elite outside shooting. Defensive tools. Freak athleticism. At 22 years old, he already looked like a great role player with superstar upside behind it.

Yet now that he is 25 instead of 22, and some of that theoretical upside has turned into a real player, the conversation has soured.

You will hear that the defense is not what it used to be. They will say he never really developed the pick-and-roll game people hoped for. Evaluators will point to the increased offensive load and say that production doesn't make up for the little things slipping. There is even a section of the NBA world that now paints Trey as an empty-calorie 20-point scorer.

While I none of this is unfair to say, I have sold exactly zero shares of Trey Murphy stock.

I still think he is the kind of player good teams should be desperate to get their hands on. Maybe I am biased, but when I watch him, my brain keeps filtering out the bad stuff and seeing flashes of the guy I can picture playing 32 minutes a game in the Finals. In spurts this season, I've really enjoyed watching him play.

The shooting speaks for itself. He is one of the better high-volume shooters in the league, and not in some standstill catch-and-shoot-only way either. He can bomb them from deep, fire off the dribble, hit on the move, torch teams in transition, and punish wild closeouts with rim pressure that is not always common for a shooter of this caliber.

But more importantly, I still believe in the competitive upside. In a better environment, I think the defense he flashed early in his career would come back into focus, and I think a lot of the little things would too. It's not like we don't still see the smart instinctive cuts, or getting his hands dirty on the offensive glass He's also still a nightmare in transition, stressing defenses both beyond the arc and at the rim.

I keep coming back to the same thought: Trey Murphy might not have turned into the top-tier offensive player some once fanaticized about, but he still has all the makings of the perfect role player, as long as he is actually allowed to be one.

He is a 6-foot-9 sharpshooter with real rim pressure who can play multiple positions and defend at a high level when he's engaged. Put him around other good players. Put him in real games. Put him in a situation where the competitive edge he showed in college and early in his pro career can come back to the surface.

I hope when I see Trey Murphy next year, he has a Pistons jersey on.

. . .

Indiana Pacers

People around the league had Indiana on their radar as a potential trade deadline buyers despite the abysmal record.

Not because this year’s team was going anywhere, but because the nucleus of a group that had been in the Finals just eight months earlier was still there, injuries had just turned this season into a gap year. They were missing a center, and instead of waiting until the offseason, they got their guy early in the middle of a lost season.

This group was one win away from a title last year, and I never really bought the idea that the run was some total fluke. Yes, the comebacks were wild. Yes, the offense caught fire in stretches that felt almost cartoonish. But I think a lot of that magic came from a very real offensive identity paired with a defense people forget was one of the best in the league over the second half of the season.

Indiana bottomed out under the weight of Haliburton’s injury this year. But next season, they feel primed for a huge bounce-back right back into the title picture.

The core is still intact. Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Obi Toppin, and T.J. McConnell all looked good in the spurts they played this season and will be back for 2026-27. Then you add Ivica Zubac, who gives them something they did not even have during the Finals run: a big, physical two-way interior anchor.

He is a different archetype from Myles Turner, but I think he might fit this team even better in some ways. He is not going to pick-and-pop, but I like him more as that screener and dribble-handoff hub Indiana loves in the middle of the floor. He is a better screener, more comfortable playing out of the short roll, and very effective punishing mismatches inside.

And like Utah, Indiana still has a chance to add another high-end talent through the draft with a little lottery luck. I know high upside rookies immediately joining contending teams hasn't always produced pretty results, but the top of this class feels as plug-n-play as it gets.

. . .