Thanks to the trades that sent out Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, the Utah Jazz will have multiple first-round picks in 2025, 2027 and 2029, plus several additional swaps. The Oklahoma City Thunder are the only other team with a comparable stockpile.

Those assets alongside Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks and Walker Kessler give the Jazz loads of upside.

That said, Utah doesn’t feel like a true rebuilder because it just locked down 27-year-old Lauri Markkanen through 2028-29 at an average pay rate of nearly $50 million per season. Jordan Clarkson, John Collins and Collin Sexton are also still on the roster, and the Jazz have gone two straight years without embracing a tank until too late in the season to secure high lottery picks.

Maybe Markkanen is little more than a trade asset to Utah, but his presence along with a lot of generally anti-rebuild behavior means the Jazz don’t get to feature in our top five. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

They’re at least trying to get themselves out of the middle, but the Bulls aren’t quite in the rebuild realm yet. To get there, they’ll need to move off of Zach LaVine’s contract, ideally without giving up any of their own future picks to do so, and also find a taker for Nikola Vucević’s deal.

Old treadmill-running habits die hard, and the Bulls raised eyebrows when they took Josh Giddey back from the Oklahoma City Thunder (instead of draft picks) for Alex Caruso.

Giddey, 21, is at least young enough to profile as a growth candidate, but Chicago onboarded him just as he hit extension eligibility.

Give the Bulls some grace. After years of chasing the eighth seed and avoiding the necessary pain of a real rebuild, they’re new at this.

Scottie Barnes is a cornerstone, and Immanuel Quickley might be close to that status, but this team is otherwise stuck in the middle.

Jakob Poeltl is making $20 million per season, RJ Barrett is what he is, and both Kelly Olynyk and Bruce Brown will look out of place until they’re traded.

Toronto is too good to tank and not good enough to do more than threaten for a play-in spot. This isn’t a rebuild, despite the absence of the previous veteran core: Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby.

Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball are already good enough for the Charlotte Hornets to start thinking about a playoff push, and Miles Bridges’ three-year, $75 million deal suggests tanking isn’t in the cards.

Remember, too, that Ball earned an All-Star nod two years ago and is already on his rookie-scale max extension. The Hornets are starting over in one sense, in that they have a new head coach, ownership group and front office. But they don’t belong among the early-stage rebuilds we’ll cover momentarily.