Game 68: Utah Jazz (38-29) vs. MinnesotaTimberwolves (32-36)

[Inigo Montoya]

Dante Exum and Andrew Wiggins looking like the same player right now

Poster kids for the anti-tanks folks.

Needing to select the right player once you get to the top of the draft goes without saying, I don't think it weakens the pro-tanking argument at all. As a counter for such an argument, LeBron, Duncan and Doncic and many more could be the poster kids for the pro-tanking folks.

[babyjax13]

Dante Exum and Andrew Wiggins looking like the same player right now

Poster kids for the anti-tanks folks.

Needing to Select the right player once you get to the top of the draft goes without saying, I don't think it weakens the pro-tanking argument at all. As a counter for such an argument, LeBron, Duncan and Doncic and many more could be the poster kids for the pro-tanking folks.

Also Aaron Gordon was who Utah wanted that year, he just happened to be taken before us. From 5-10 the picks were: Dante, Marcus Smart, Julius Randle, Nik Stauskas, Noah Vonleh, and Elfrid Payton. The consensus picks (Stauskas and Payton were seen at the time as overdrafts, the other people that were at the tail end of a lot of mock draft top 10's were Adrian Payne and Zach Lavine) didn't turn out that well. Smart, Randle, and Lavine are all pretty good, but we wouldn't be in an appreciably different position with any of them. Plus, later in the draft we got Hood, who would likely go top 12 in a redraft, so it's not like we did an awful job in that draft (he's 11th in winshares, but I'd take Anderson, Dinwiddie, Warren, Harris and Bogdanovic over him, so maybe more like 15). As bad as Dante has been, in that draft range none of the players were really hits (Randle started to turn it around last year) and at least Dante is *still* as young as some rookies. That being said he kind of seems like those kids in sports who are bad, but instead of admitting that they are bad or make mistakes, instead say that they are hurt, lol. It's really, really frustrating to see how often he's hurt, especially when he *finally* appeared to be putting it together. I'm not holding out much hope for him anymore, but I'm not all that upset by the missed pick or taking a shot with the contract.

[KqWIN]

To SoCal’s point, Exum is a poster child for “anything can happen”. The unpredictability of the draft is a reason not to tank. That entire draft is a great example of this.

Going into the draft, people thought it could be an all time great draft with multiple players that could have gone number one in a given year. What happened?

Wiggins is horrible
Parker is injured and bad
Embiid, the biggest risk, is great
Exum is injured and bad
Smart is a great role player
Randle is productive yet polarizing
Staukas stinks
Vonleh stinks
Payton stinks

Oof, the disappointment in that top 10 is crazy.

[SoCalJazzFan]

For the record, I am not an anti-tank guy, in fact, I think that the Jazz royally screwed up their opportunity to tank during the Corbin years. That being said, it is a crapshoot. There might only be one or two teams this year that walk away with a player (Zion and Barrett most likely) that was worth tanking for.