This has to be asked???

[Effigy]

I would not mind missing the playoffs one bit. Get us a nice lottery pick, let AK and Elson or Fes go and sign some role players that can shoot and defend.

That's not going to work either. Even if Utah somehow misses the playoffs this year, they'd be the 9th or 10th seed in the west, drafting 14th or 15th. You wont' get an impact guy there. You guys had the 9th pick last year and got Hayward who is far from an impact player. It's really difficult to get impact players through the draft unless you're in the top 5. It can be done, but requires a lot of luck and is very rare.

[countrybama24]

It's really difficult to get impact players through the draft unless you're in the top 5. It can be done, but requires a lot of luck and is very rare.

It's also a question of numbers. The Jazz rarely have even 10-15 range picks, don't stash picks as frequently as other more financially endowed teams too, and have had to trade their pick away in some years. If we were trading for picks every year like the blazers, we would nail some players in the 10-15 range because I think generally our FO is pretty solid at drafting (except for our strategy of taking the "sure thing" over the "high potential athlete", but that's a whole other issue). But we just sit there with the 20-30 picks where there is a huge drop-off in talent.

I understand our financial constraints as well as anyone. But I'm just saying the argument that "getting impact players through the draft fails without top 5 picks" is true only if we only shoot for keeping our first round picks which end up in the 20s, not if we developed a concerted strategy of stashing (even slightly) better first round picks.

[UTJazzFan_Echo1]

All I know is that I'm a big believer in building through the draft. Just look at what OKC did with all of their draft picks. Sure, they hit the right guys with the right picks but the point is that you're never going to get someone for "free" that is going to be a big impact player on your team anywhere else. You pay big money to get big time players or you trade big time players to get other big time players. You need draft picks (good ones/a lot of picks) to really build for a championship.

That is of course assuming you're not the Lakers who buy big time players with dirt or Miami who has a big time player (who they drafted) that coaxes all of his buddies who just so happen to be other big time players to come play for the team....