2026 NBA Trade Discussion Thread

Coach Ellis said:

Jazz have 5 guys that they should definitely look to trade at the deadline. All vets.

Nurkic, Svi, Love, Anderson and Niang.

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Why the hell should we deal Nurkic?

Keyonte just said in an interview that Nurk's been essential in enabling him to make his offensive leap. The screening and passing have been elite. This stuff matters.

I'm more sure than ever that tankers simply do not like basketball. I'm not sure what they do like, but it probably has something to do with a feeling of superiority and a desire to control what is essentially a chaotic environment.

Tremendous Upside said:

Why the hell should we deal Nurkic?

Keyonte just said in an interview that Nurk's been essential in enabling him to make his offensive leap. The screening and passing have been elite. This stuff matters.

I'm more sure than ever that tankers simply do not like basketball. I'm not sure what they do like, but it probably has something to do with a feeling of superiority and a desire to control what is essentially a chaotic environment.

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Key, Lauri, and Ace all benefit a ton from playing with an elite screening big like Nurkic. That’s the main reason I’m skeptical of Taylor playing any minutes as a small ball center.

Peter_Mentor said:

Key, Lauri, and Ace all benefit a ton from playing with an elite screening big like Nurkic. That’s the main reason I’m skeptical of Taylor playing any minutes as a small ball center.

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Its also one area where optimal development clashes with tanking. You cant learn DHO, PNR and other screen plays proper if you are runnkng those plays with someone who is trash at it.

Tremendous Upside said:

Why the hell should we deal Nurkic?

Keyonte just said in an interview that Nurk's been essential in enabling him to make his offensive leap. The screening and passing have been elite. This stuff matters.

I'm more sure than ever that tankers simply do not like basketball. I'm not sure what they do like, but it probably has something to do with a feeling of superiority and a desire to control what is essentially a chaotic environment.

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The tankers are just super focused on win/loss min-maxing and few of them are pushing hard that development has strong correlation with quantity of minutes, while not even addressing quality.

I personally believe low quality PT can even be net negative for development, albeit usually its still better than no PT. Reinforcing bad habits, undermining confidence, learning to do things the wrong way... all those things occur more frequentöy with bad teams and increase "developmental debt" instead of reducing it.

HermanG said:

I personally believe low quality PT can even be net negative for development, albeit usually its still better than no PT. Reinforcing bad habits, undermining confidence, learning to do things the wrong way... all those things occur more frequentöy with bad teams and increase "developmental debt" instead of reducing it.

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Trading away Nurk and playing a totally outmatched Flip at 5 would do exactly that.

@Elizah Huge ^^^^^

Not just one guy

I don’t think trading Nurk is a huge tanking move. Flip isn’t a great C, but neither is Nurk. We’ve actually done just fine with Flip at 5 this season, and maybe more importantly Flip has actually been terrible as a 4. He’s still a bad defender, but he’s also a very bad offensive player. At the 5 he at least produces good offense. This is a trend that has been true this year and last.

FWIW:

KqWIN said:

I don’t think trading Nurk is a huge tanking move. Flip isn’t a great C, but neither is Nurk. We’ve actually done just fine with Flip at 5 this season, and maybe more importantly Flip has actually been terrible as a 4. He’s still a bad defender, but he’s also a very bad offensive player. At the 5 he at least produces good offense. This is a trend that has been true this year and last.

FWIW:

View attachment 19879

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Nurkic leads the entire league in screen assists

KqWIN said:

I don’t think trading Nurk is a huge tanking move. Flip isn’t a great C, but neither is Nurk. We’ve actually done just fine with Flip at 5 this season, and maybe more importantly Flip has actually been terrible as a 4. He’s still a bad defender, but he’s also a very bad offensive player. At the 5 he at least produces good offense. This is a trend that has been true this year and last.

FWIW:

View attachment 19879

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This is also very interesting because people have partially attributed Nurkic for Keyonte’s breakout.

Elizah Huge said:

This is also very interesting because people have partially attributed Nurkic for Keyonte’s breakout.

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Which is great, but doesn’t help them keep the pick. Look, I’m not opposed to keeping him the rest of this season or even next year as an affordable backup. . . if there's no deal to be made. IF he has value and can net a positive asset. . . the Jazz would be stupid to pass that up. Granted. . . whatever they get has to be better than whatever they gave up.

Coach Ellis said:

Which is great, but doesn’t help them keep the pick. Look, I’m not opposed to keeping him the rest of this season or even next year as an affordable backup. . . if there's no deal to be made. IF he has value and can net a positive asset. . . the Jazz would be stupid to pass that up. Granted. . . whatever they get has to be better than whatever they gave up.

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I think we should trade him and think he would affect us more than people seem to think.

Elizah Huge said:

This is also very interesting because people have partially attributed Nurkic for Keyonte’s breakout.

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I don't think it's super important to "showcase" prospects as best as possible for the most development, but if you are going to go down that road I think it's worth looking at how Key actually performs with different players. I tend to agree with Hardy's opinion on this. Key is not good because of XYZ, he's just good on his own.

As far as the tanking side of this, I don't really think trading Nurk helps tank that much versus Flip at 5. It kind of depends on how much Hardy sits Nurk/vets and who exactly would be replacing those minutes. But I do think we are spending too many roster spots on vets. I'd like to get a revolving door of prospects and see what sticks. If we don't go into the summer without adding at least 1-2 guys on multi-year, non-guaranteed contracts I'd consider that a failure.