What's new

2024-2025 Tank Race

I would imagine Kyrie misses most of next season and AD asks for a trade away from Dallas this summer.

This is the worst situation in NBA history so AD should probably want out.
 
Who's suggesting running it back as it was currently constituted? We keep getting told there were no options; that was indeed the convention wisdom. How is it you're so absolutely certain/confident this was the case? The conventional wisdom that Mitchell would surely bolt Cleveland for NY or greener pastures, but Cleveland found a way to make it work.

I was skeptical then, and I am skeptical now. Blowing it up and tanking was the easy and safe way. It relieved the FO of the hard work of being creative while simultaneously allowing them to pose as geniuses, notwithstanding tanking is the default strategy in today's NBA and thus hardly the strategy of the truly intellectually gifted. Meanwhile, the FO continues to receive plaudits and applause for its brilliance for subjecting its fans to a protracted stretch of sucktitude with the most likely outcome being years of suffering only to wind up back where we started: a good, competitive team that provides entertaining, competitive basketball during the regular season but which inevitably falls short in the playoffs. 4,5,6, etc. years of investment in sucking for THIS return?

If this were a stock or other form of investment, who in their right mind would make it?
You write like a young attention-seeking college student who wants to be seen as an intellectual. The overly convoluted language isn’t impressive, especially when you aren’t really saying anything of substance.
 
I didn't think we could catch the Hornets... but now that head to head game with them likely is the decider. Lose that and we are really in business.
 
You write like a young attention-seeking college student who wants to be seen as an intellectual. The overly convoluted language isn’t impressive, especially when you aren’t really saying anything of substance.

Bruh, these aren't even five dollar words in the post you're quoting, these are like 25 cent words, just get a higher reading level, lol.
 
Ehh, the Jazz had six firsts available to trade after they lost to the Clippers and Ryan Smith instead decided to use those picks to salary dump Favors (who they had massively overpaid the offseason before).

The other thing is that the Jazz purposefully chose to not make the playoffs in 2023 (even after the Mitchell trade) and 2024 and 2025 by not making any moves to improve the roster. The Jazz traded away half of their rotation at the 2023 deadline for one bad draft pick (probably the 19th pick in 2027)

They have chosen intentionally throwing games over being like a 45 win team and thus need to be a title contender after this is over to justify it (but they probably won't).

It's nearly impossible to win a title without going deep into the luxury tax and there's no indication that Smith will do this.

Utah is also a market where it's nearly impossible to win a title as well.

The ownership and market make it much harder to believe there's any plausible path to title contention, making the tanking much odder.

If the Jazz win the lottery back to back years and get Flagg and Peterson, sure, we can then win the title, but the odds of this happening are 2%, lol.
I feel quite confident with Ryan's ability to spend though. More so than the Millers after Larry passed away that's for sure. Wasn't Ryan responsible for getting us a hockey team as well as getting Dybantsa to BYU? Also I'd assume it wasn't cheap to bring Ainge out of his retirement.
 
I feel quite confident with Ryan's ability to spend though. More so than the Millers after Larry passed away that's for sure. Wasn't Ryan responsible for getting us a hockey team as well as getting Dybantsa to BYU? Also I'd assume it wasn't cheap to bring Ainge out of his retirement.

IDK, the Derrick Favors salary dump just destroyed my faith that this team will ever seriously try to contend under Smith.

The Bucks and Suns were the weakest Finals teams probably in NBA history and instead of going "well, we need a better coach and a better wing, let's fire Quin and trade Conley+picks for a wing, this is our only shot to win" they just instantly folded.
 
IDK, the Derrick Favors salary dump just destroyed my faith that this team will ever seriously try to contend under Smith.

The Bucks and Suns were the weakest Finals teams probably in NBA history and instead of going "well, we need a better coach and a better wing, let's fire Quin and trade Conley+picks for a wing, this is our only shot to win" they just instantly folded.
Favs salary dump was on DL though cuz I mean let's be honest, who isn't sick and tired of his unhealthy obsession over the BaCKUp cEnTeR? Us giving up a FTP in the deal is also a pretty good indication that a full rebuild wasn't part of the plan back then. It was merely another cleanup effort for one of the many DL screwups. Lets not forget, we also happened to sign Whiteside and spent another FRP on Doke in that same summer. So there were like 3 BAcKuP CeNtERs on the team already. We traded Favs not because Ryan wanted to save money, but purely due to the fact that we didn't really have room for him any more and it was much more cost efficient to just sign a backup on a min, which DL struggled to understand.

And if DL truly understood the concept of a 3D wing, we'd have acquired one long ago. And honestly that ship has sailed by the time Ryan took over, and trading away Conley would only create a new set of problems. Bringing in Ainge to right the ship with a full rebuild was the right thing to do.
 
Favs salary dump was on DL though cuz I mean let's be honest, who isn't sick and tired of his unhealthy obsession over the BaCKUp cEnTeR? Us giving up a FTP in the deal is also a pretty good indication that a full rebuild wasn't part of the plan back then. It was merely another cleanup effort for one of the many DL screwups. Lets not forget, we also happened to sign Whiteside and spent another FRP on Doke in that same summer. So there were like 3 BAcKuP CeNtERs on the team already. We traded Favs not because Ryan wanted to save money, but purely due to the fact that we didn't really have room for him any more and it was much more cost efficient to just sign a backup on a min, which DL struggled to understand.

And if DL truly understood the concept of a 3D wing, we'd have acquired one long ago. And honestly that ship has sailed by the time Ryan took over, and trading away Conley would only create a new set of problems. Bringing in Ainge to right the ship with a full rebuild was the right thing to do.

I mean, they didn't have to salary dump Favors though if they needed to trade him. It was very possible to combine the salary of Favors and another guy (probably Bogi?) with picks to try to get a wing. Them doing a pure salary dump to open up an MLE to sign a 78 year old Rudy Gay.... Really bad actually.
 
I mean, they didn't have to salary dump Favors though if they needed to trade him. It was very possible to combine the salary of Favors and another guy (probably Bogi?) with picks to try to get a wing. Them doing a pure salary dump to open up an MLE to sign a 78 year old Rudy Gay.... Really bad actually.
They probably tried then realized Favs was way too expansive as a backup center and had negative trade value at the time.

And honestly, Bogey never had much trade value either and simply wasn't as good as we thought in the eyes of other GMs. We traded Bogey just one season later and the best offer we could get was KO and some cash. KO is a very good player don't get me wrong but at the time of the trade he was at the abolute low point of his career, having missed half of the season for Detroit on less than 20 min per game. He was basically treated as a salary dump and if that was what we got for Bogey then I don't think a trade for a wing was on the table.

We had the chance to do some minor retool before 2021 but DL blew it. That 2020 draft night was an absolute disaster and the final nail in the coffin. After that we tried to trade(and did trade) Conley/Bogey/Favs/Royce and couldn't get much of return. So the only way forward was to trade DM and Rudy for a full rebuild.
 
I think that no matter what the Jazz had in mind before they blew things up, the offer that materialized for Gobert kind of forced their hand. Gobert is one of my favorite players ever, but building around him on the contract he was on was always going to be hard. Once someone showed up offering KD value, you have to take that deal.
 
Back
Top