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Still A Harsh Reality... Players not wanting to play in Utah

The reality is there are only a handful of teams that are first choice locations for 90% of the league.


I think the previous regime and ownership leaned more into the family friendly side to hopefully attract and retain veterans (which hilariously did not keep Gordon Hayward). Seems like Smith/Danny are less focused on that and more just about making Utah look cooler.


The reality is that Utah just isn't most people's vibe. And even if a player did like Utah, everyone knows Utah's perception so they are going to leverage that in contract negotiations.

And no one has even brought up the massive financial implications of getting drafted to Utah vs a major market. We just saw Austin Reaves get a 7 figure shoe deal for being Joe Ingles for a half season.

When Donovan got his major shoe deal I thought maybe he could break the mold and be Utah's first successful marketable player. He ended up being kind of milquetoast as a personality though. I doubt his shoes sold well nationally and I assume he probably blames the Utah market for that (Adidas treated him as an after thought after the ROTY campaign despite having a signature shoe. Kind of funny that I originally thought the deal was good for Utah as it meant it was possible to overcome the market, but the reality is that Adidas just signed him with the idea of eventually getting home out). I also assume his Adidas reps were 100% behind the New York rumors as they are the party with the most incentive for him to get to NYK.
 
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I think a guy like Clarkson is cool in Utah because he already had the LA experience. He is friends with the Kardashians already. He has all the celebrity connections to the big time parties and events.
 
JimLes said:
But the other part of that is that I don't understand what impact this has on an average NBA player. Detroit is 80% black and I do not for a second believe that any Pistons players live in predominantly black parts of Detroit or Detroit Metro. Based on where the Jazz players tend to live around SLC, I assume they live in the whitest places imaginable. I also find it difficult to believe that the higher the black population of the city is, the lower the racism you face. A white police officer doesn't care if the city is 5% black or 50% black when pulling you over for driving a "suspiciously" expensive car. What would be the benefit of living in a city with a larger black population for someone who's a multi-millionaire from the start?
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Dear lord this might be some of the most ignorant **** I've read.
 
"Rich black people don't want to live in poor parts of a city so why do they care about living in cities with larger black populations" is quite the racist take.
 
Also my favorite irony among the Utah/Players relationship thing is that the most Utah star Utah has ever had is the one they shunned the most.

Deron Williams is Utah through and through. He loves his golf, MMA, and white women. He came back to Utah to leave his wife and get the most basic Utah IG looking 30 something possible
 
Rubashov said:
Who gives a ****? First 7 years of a players career they have no choice where they play and if as a professional athlete in your mid twenties you priorities the party over winning well you can **** off.
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I mean, ideally you want your players happy. We saw the effects of what bad locker-room does to a team in teh Dallas series.
 
Damn Cy, this is a very important topic to you apparently.
 
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