The Utah Jazz have hired Austin Ainge away from the Boston Celtics as the team’s president of basketball operations, it was announced Monday.
Utah’s current general manager, Justin Zanik, will remain in his role after Ainge’s arrival, sources said, and the two will work together moving forward.
It’s the second big move Utah has made off the court in the past several weeks, after the Jazz locked up coach Will Hardy to a long-term contract extension last month that runs through 2031.
Ainge, 43, has been with the Celtics since 2009, when he was hired to be the coach of their G League affiliate. Two years later, he moved into a front office role and has remained with Boston for the past 14 seasons, including the past six as an assistant general manager.
He worked under his father, Danny, for over a decade in Boston, and will now reunite with him in Utah after the latter — who left the Celtics in the summer of 2021 — was hired by Jazz owner Ryan Smith as chief executive officer as well as taking on the role of alternate governor in December of that year.
Over the past 14 years, Austin Ainge has been part of a Celtics front office that has consistently been hailed as among the league’s best. In addition to winning the 2024 NBA title, the Celtics have made the playoffs in 17 of the last 18 seasons and have won at least one playoff series in eight of the last nine years.
Ainge, however, will be inheriting a Jazz roster that’s in a much different place. While Utah does have All-Star forward Lauri Markkanen under contract for the next four years, the Jazz won 17 games this past season — their lowest win total in franchise history — and finished with the NBA’s worst record in the hopes of getting some lottery luck and landing Cooper Flagg with the top pick in next month’s NBA draft.
Instead, the Jazz fell all way down to the fifth pick in the draft after failing to get any of the four drawn selections in last month’s draft lottery. Utah also has the 21st overall pick as part of the Rudy Gobert trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves, as well as a pair of second-round picks.
Utah’s roster includes six recent first-round picks by the Jazz, and eight players under the age of 23.
Source: espn.com