The 2024 trade deadline: Jazz version

[bkohler]

I think there's a pretty decent chance that conveying the pick was exactly what Ange wanted to do but circumstances changed things. I don't see it as a lie; things change.

I was very wrong about us playing around the same level of ball. It is definitely clear we decided to go all-in on the tank.

[Inigo Montoya]

I think there's a pretty decent chance that conveying the pick was exactly what Ange wanted to do but circumstances changed things. I don't see it as a lie; things change.

I was very wrong about us playing around the same level of ball. It is definitely clear we decided to go all-in on the tank.

What was the change in circumstance? It looked to me like it was Ainge who changed the circumstances, no one forced him to tank. If he planned on conveying the pick he could have simply not tank and stayed the course.

Before the season started it was clear that this team's ceiling is making the play-in. The team was on pace to do that. If he didn't liked that ceiling, why didn't he tank from the beginning? Why change course half way through?

[Gert42]

I think it was probably two factors:

1. Playing John Collins was a disaster on defense and tanked trade value.

2. The trade value was so good for Simone they had to do it and then the KO-Ochai was good enough to do too.

The Jazz were 10th in the West and 26-27 when they made the Simone trade. I think the Simone trade had to be made for essentially pick 31-34. I’m a little more skeptical about the second trade, but I do think the Jazz had a very finite window between pick 9 and 12 (which is obviously a big difference with the Top 10 protection).

I think we finish behind at least 2 of GSW-LAL-HOU, but I’m not sure if moving from 10 to 8 is going to be worth everyone being miserable for three months.

[AingesBurner]

Watching Money Ball, it’s interesting because Dennis Lindsey took the Billy Beane approach whereas Danny Ainge is taking the superstar approach with stats.

[babyjax13]

I think Ainge is willing to hold for his trade price and his price only. Lottery odds seem less important to him and I don't know that I love that.

[HadAnEffectHere]

I think Ainge is willing to hold for his trade price and his price only. Lottery odds seem less important to him and I don't know that I love that.

I'm just not sure I see the endgame at all with this regime.

-Ainge is completely uninterested in building a first/second round exit
-Ryan Smith seems too cheap and risk-averse to go deep into the luxury tax or deep into draft pick debt (which is kind of required to win titles...)
-Ainge only wants superstars
-The team only wants players that want to stay in Utah over other locations (... and money isn't going to be a winning factor for superstars staying unless the Jazz draft them as superstars can get the same money everywhere)

What is the team even attempting to build to?

The Jazz can probably win 50 games next year if they trade John Collins and 1-2 picks for Jerami Grant and get a PG but like... They probably could have done that at the deadline as well and they were completely uninterested. Ainge just seems to want to win a title so he needs 1-2 superstars.

But how are they ever going to get a superstar? They're not even swinging at high upside guys so far, Hendricks and George probably had less upside than Whitmore. Not clear either guy has a ton of upside at all. Sensabaugh had some upside, but not superstar upside.

[bkohler]

-Ainge is completely uninterested in building a first/second round exit

I appreciate him for that. Someone who was less willing to put up with pain would have probably just ridden out the Gobert/Mitchell teams until we lost Mitchell for nothing and Gobert had lost most of his value. The same thing has been true for both teams over the past two years.

-Ryan Smith seems too cheap and risk-averse to go deep into the luxury tax or deep into draft pick debt (which is kind of required to win titles...)

I must have missed some of the conversations about Ryan not wanting to pay for the luxury tax or being cheap on things. Has that been a talking point somewhere?

-Ainge only wants superstars

I'm not sure that's 100% true. He knows you need a top-ten player to win in this league, but his track record shows he looks for quality players wherever he can find them. Thomas in Boston is a good example, and Irving is another. He takes swings instead of sitting with the status quo.

-The team only wants players that want to stay in Utah over other locations (... and money isn't going to be a winning factor for superstars staying unless the Jazz draft them, as superstars can get the same money everywhere)

This is probably true of every team; I don't think there's any evidence that the team is unwilling to do something like OKC did with Paul George. The rumors of us being in the conversation for players like Lillard, even after he said he didn't want to come here, indicate that we're willing to get someone here and then sell them on staying.

To me, the Jazz are being criticized heavily right now, and that is just sheer impatience. The current FO hasn't been perfect, but they've had some home runs and some base hits, and they whiffed on a few. However, they haven't been willing to settle for barely making the playoffs.

If there's a critique I think is justified, it's that we didn't go all in last year when Wemby was a possibility. I actually think that's what is happening, but with an eye towards next year. I think 2025 will be painful, much like the second half of 2024. But I think our eyes have been on Flagg/Bailey for some time.

[HadAnEffectHere]

Ryan trading a first to dump Favors' contract to sign Rudy Gay and Hassan Whiteside and then trading Mitchell and Gobert instead of trading future firsts for a guy like OG Anunoby seems like pretty good evidence here.

The Jazz breaking up Mitchell-Gobert before trading any future firsts for another star and only going slightly into the luxury tax (and without even firing Quin) is epicly bad in retrospect and speaks to a very risk-averse and cheap owner.

The Jazz responded to the Clippers series by not firing Quin and then using a first round pick to salary dump a guy making $10m.

It was obscenely bad management.

[bkohler]

I might have some of my details a bit mixed up here but my recollection is that the Jazz didn’t have any firsts left after the Conley trade and the favors trade to attempt to go get another star. Hence why it made sense to move on from Gobert/Mitchell - we were capped out and already had mortgaged all our picks.

I agree that trading Favors was a bad move, but I think that was more Dennis Lindsay than Ryan Smith. I don’t believe I’ve seen any real money saving moves besides the favors trade and that really felt like it was a way to avoid the larger repeater payments that could have been coming if the core stuck around.

I think there’s plenty to be critical of when it comes to the Jazz FO, I just don’t think being cheap is one of those things. At least not yet.

[HadAnEffectHere]

The Jazz owed one pick in 2022 after the Clippers series.

They had six other firsts available to trade.

[AingesBurner]

The Jazz owed one pick in 2022 after the Clippers series.

They had six other firsts available to trade.

The OKC trade tied their pick up until 2026, Stepien rules would only allow them to trade a swap in 27, a 1st in 28, and a swap in 29.

[Inigo Montoya]

I don't see Ryan Smith as being cheap as of yet.

The Jazz were depleted of assets and weren't in a position to trade for a star. Their only real assets who could net them one were Mitchell and Gobert, which would have been a lateral move. I couldn't see how they could add a star to Mitchell and Gobert, they had no trade chips. The asking price for Anunoby was ridiculous at the time and it was (and still is) expected he'd opt out of his player option and ask for a really big contract that I'm not sure I'd be happy if the Jazz elected to give so many assets for him and then pay him that kind of money.

Trading Favors (and let's be honest, signing Favors) was a bad move. I see it as cost cutting by the FO to allow flexibility in making moves rather than a cost-saving move because the owner was cheap.

If Smith were cheap he wouldn't have gone into full rebuild mode right when the Allstar game was in SLC. The Jazz surprised everyone that season with how good they were (until they decided to tank) but the expectation was they'd be awful and totally irrelevant right when they hosted the Allstar game. If anything, this moved made the impression on me that they were serious about rebuilding and that it wouldn't be the same old thing we had with the Millers (not to say I've been happy with all the moves they made since then).

I wasn't a big Snyder fan and never thought he was that good. I would have been happy if he and the Jazz parted ways after the Clippers series but parting ways a season later is overall acceptable and I'm happy it happened. I'm less happy about how it was rumored (and I guess confirmed) that the Jazz really wanted him to stay but he's gone and I'll take what I can get.

[bkohler]

The Jazz owed one pick in 2022 after the Clippers series.

They had six other firsts available to trade.

The OKC trade tied their pick up until 2026, Stepien rules would only allow them to trade a swap in 27, a 1st in 28, and a swap in 29.

The favors trade was the gift that just kept on giving. A 1st and two swaps weren't getting us anything that would push us over the top. The Gobert/Mitchell combo had come to an end and it was time to move on, that was pretty apparent for just about everyone.

One thing I think that we as fans fall victim to is penalizing FOs and ownership groups for deals that could have been made without all the context of the conversations around them. To say we should have traded for Anunoby, or one I fall victim to, that we should have traded for CP3 instead of Conley, is easy, but it ignores that there are lots of factors at play. Even the thought that the Jazz should have traded away more players to tank harder last year is easy on the outside; however, I think we might forget that Conley, for instance, didn't have much, if any, trade value going into the 2022-23 season. Was it worth paying someone to take him? Or taking back the bad salary you'd have to match?

I think it's probably much more profitable to look at the deals that did happen and judge them based on those, but again, it can't be judging them based on how much value we think they should have gotten; it's based on what the market dictated. To do that you really need to compare deals made by other teams in the same season. It would be a worthwhile tasks to look at all the deals made by the current FO and compare them to deals made by other FO's in the same year. I think that would help us see how the FO is really doing.

[HadAnEffectHere]

The Jazz owed one pick in 2022 after the Clippers series.

They had six other firsts available to trade.

The OKC trade tied their pick up until 2026, Stepien rules would only allow them to trade a swap in 27, a 1st in 28, and a swap in 29.

...............

They.... did not need to make the Favors trade?

After they lost to the Clippers, most teams would have fired Quin and traded their 4-6 picks for a star forward. Instead, the Jazz used a draft pick to salary dump.

[bkohler]

The Jazz owed one pick in 2022 after the Clippers series.

They had six other firsts available to trade.

The OKC trade tied their pick up until 2026, Stepien rules would only allow them to trade a swap in 27, a 1st in 28, and a swap in 29.

...............

They.... did not need to make the Favors trade?

After they lost to the Clippers, most teams would have fired Quin and traded their 4-6 picks for a star forward. Instead, the Jazz used a draft pick to salary dump.

Ah, we’re thinking of different timelines here. You’re right they could have made a move at that point and they probably should have. To me this wasn’t Ryan being cheap but DL using future capital to fix his mistake.

[AingesBurner]

The Jazz owed one pick in 2022 after the Clippers series.

They had six other firsts available to trade.

The OKC trade tied their pick up until 2026, Stepien rules would only allow them to trade a swap in 27, a 1st in 28, and a swap in 29.

...............

They.... did not need to make the Favors trade?

After they lost to the Clippers, most teams would have fired Quin and traded their 4-6 picks for a star forward. Instead, the Jazz used a draft pick to salary dump.

Wow, didn’t realize that was 22! Thought it was the year before. We could have used capital along with Favors to improve, you’re correct.

[Gert42]

The real Butterfly Effect moment for the Jazz was taking Udoka in the 2020 Draft. While in general I hate doing the "missed out on Player X", Jaden McDaniels and Desmond Bane went in 2 of the next 3 picks AND the Jazz then resigned Favors 4 days later in FA. So they most likely knew they were going to sign Favors, and still took Udoka who at most would get what 15 minutes per game since there was almost no world he and Rudy were going play on the court together.

[bkohler]

Changing topics a bit here, are there any players that currently match the Jazz time line that you guys have your eyes on?

I personally would love to steal one of the Pelicans young wings: Jones, Murphy, Daniels or Hawkins.

[babyjax13]

The real Butterfly Effect moment for the Jazz was taking Udoka in the 2020 Draft. While in general I hate doing the "missed out on Player X", Jaden McDaniels and Desmond Bane went in 2 of the next 3 picks AND the Jazz then resigned Favors 4 days later in FA. So they most likely knew they were going to sign Favors, and still took Udoka who at most would get what 15 minutes per game since there was almost no world he and Rudy were going play on the court together.

There were rumors we wanted Quickley (drafted 25th), too, who we could have easily moved up to get (with #38).

[Inigo Montoya]

The Azubuike pick was bad for various reasons but there are worse things that can happen to your franchise than missing on the 28th pick in the draft.