The schedule makers delivered a high-stakes opening night as the former Defensive Player of the Year returns to Memphis to face the team that traded him away.
Jaren Jackson Jr. won't have to wait very long for his first opportunity to take on his former team as a member of the Utah Jazz.
Try Game 1.
The 2026-27 NBA regular-season schedule is officially set, and Utah will begin its campaign on Wednesday, Oct. 21 against the Memphis Grizzlies at FedExForum.
For most of the Jazz roster, it's simply opening night.
For Jackson? There's a bit more to it.
The Grizzlies traded Jackson to Utah in February as the centerpiece of an eight-player blockbuster that sent Walter Clayton Jr., Kyle Anderson, Taylor Hendricks, Georges Niang and three future first-round picks to Memphis. John Konchar, Jock Landale and Vince Williams Jr. joined Jackson in Utah.
The deal ended Jackson's run with the only NBA organization he had ever known.
Memphis selected the former Michigan State star No. 4 overall in the 2018 NBA Draft, and Jackson eventually became one of the faces of a young Grizzlies core alongside Ja Morant and Desmond Bane.
There were plenty of accomplishments along the way.
Jackson became a two-time All-Star, earned three All-Defensive selections and was named the 2022-23 Defensive Player of the Year while helping Memphis grow into a Western Conference contender.
Then the organization changed course.
Bane was traded to Orlando in 2025. Jackson followed him out the door in February, and Memphis completed the breakup of that former core when it traded Morant to Portland in June.
Utah's bet was considerably different.
The Jazz acquired a former Defensive Player of the Year who remains under contract through 2029-30, with a player option in the final season, to pair with Lauri Markkanen and an increasingly intriguing collection of young talent.
His first few months in Utah didn't provide much opportunity to see that vision.
Jackson appeared in only three games for the Jazz before undergoing surgery in February to remove a localized PVNS growth from his left knee. The injury also prevented him from playing when Utah visited Memphis later that month, though the Grizzlies welcomed their former star back with a video tribute.
That makes October something of a ... fresh start.
Jackson will enter his first full season in Utah as one of the established veterans surrounding No. 2 overall pick Darryn Peterson, with the Jazz attempting to turn several years of rebuilding into something more competitive.
And the NBA couldn't have provided a much more fitting place to begin.
Jackson gets his first opportunity to actually play against Memphis as a member of the Jazz on opening night before the Grizzlies follow him back to Salt Lake City just five days later on Oct. 26. They'll meet once more on Jan. 30 in Utah, with two additional games on the Jazz's schedule still to be determined based on NBA Cup results.
Calling either October game "revenge" doesn't mean Jackson left Memphis with some publicly established grudge. There isn't evidence we need to manufacture one.
But facing the franchise that decided to move on from you? On opening night? At the arena you called home for nearly eight years?
Jackson couldn't have asked for a much earlier opportunity to show his former team what it gave up.
