2024-2025 Tank Race

[Bawse Dawg]

A lot of hindsight.

The year the Jazz acquired NAW he was one of the worst rotation players in the NBA. The Wolves wont even be able to afford him next year, so is it really that big of a deal?

Ochai was a 4 year senior who was one of the other worst rotation players in the NBA in his 1.5 years in Utah.

Conley looked cooked in his last year in Utah. Him still being a positive player at age 37 is crazy.

Definitely hindsight, but how else do you evaluate the moves a tanking GM makes? Have any moves looked better than they originally did with hindsight? I’d give credit the same way I give blame.

I still maintain the 2027 Lakers pick will be better value than whatever value we lost from giving the Wolves Conley/NAW (which will only have a positive benefit for the Wolves this year). 2026/2027/2028/2029 draft capital arent going to be affected by that trade.

We still feel good about that pick even though they have Luka now?

 

[KqWIN]

I don't see it that way and didn't at the time. There was always something very deflating about that Lakers' pick because it was top 5 protected. Hoping for it being a good pick is like playing black jack and hitting on 18. I stated multiple times that it is very much within the realm of realistic possibility that we will have given up more than we got back, especially without a guaranteed first rounder built into the conditions. I have similar feelings to the recent Suns trade that I have yet to elaborate on. It's not out of the realm of reasonable probability that the pick ends up being of the caliber of the multiple others we sent for it. Of course everyone sees everything from the lens of now and tries to project what's happening now onto what the landscape will look like an eternity from now. So too with the Lakers. It's cute to assume AD falls off a cliff and LeBron retires and they become bottom dwellers but that's not realistic. Just because nobody could have seen a Luka trade doesn't mean that the Lakers can't pull stuff out of their ***, which they are bound to do. If you have the belief of them just sucking on one extreme and believing they'd land Luka for scraps on the other, I'd hate to say it but the latter scenario is closer to reality than the assumptions we were making on the other end. But we can repeat this about the Suns, too, but with less of a track record of quickly getting back on track than the Lakers.

Eh, you may have had a lower opinion of the pick at the time, but it's certainly lower now that they have Luka instead of AD and nobody could have seen that coming. Of course the Lakers could have pulled themselves out of something, but Luka is different. It wouldn't need to be a top 10 pick for it to be worth more than two second rounders.. The likelihood of them getting Luka is not the equivalent of the Lakers pick being more valuable than two seconds, that's absurd to believe those things are equivalent. Raise your hand if you said that two seconds was better than the Lakers first back then, I'll call you a liar.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Definitely hindsight, but how else do you evaluate the moves a GM makes? Have any moves looked better than they originally did with hindsight? I’d give credit the same way I give blame.


We still feel good about that pick even though they have Luka now?

I just judge moves based on the soundness of the logic behind them. Getting a Lakers pick top 4 protected was a great move. We only had to deal an aging PG and a rotation player who seemed close to out of the NBA (though yes, he was having a good season that last year with Utah).

Yes, I still feel good about the Lakers pick. We don't know what their post-Lebron life will look like. Is it as good anymore? No, but like I said, I think getting that pick is more valuable than (theoretically) the Wolves being a play in team this year if they didnt have Conley/Naw.

 

[Bawse Dawg]

Pick #31 feels like a pretty nice asset. When you’re tanking you shouldn’t throw in those extra seconds so flippantly.

 

[KqWIN]

The Jazz were in a better position the day after the trade and before it, that still stands true. Had they not made the trade they did, TH would not be here. The failure was not doing it in the preseason. They waited until the last second and got burnt. Once it became deadline time, the Jazz had the choice to go out and get their pick or go for the play in. I'm happy we chose the pick over the play in but realistically that was cutting our losses and getting out with what we could. Had they done this in the preseason, they would have gotten a better pick in the draft and likely would have gotten more value in picks for the trade itself. Greed cost us dearly.

I think the Jazz face a similar decision, and maybe one with with more magnitude with Lauri. Jazz could have definitely gotten more last summer in Lauri trade, and if the Jazz are considering trading Lauri I'm sure Ainge's ego and greed will play a factor in this.

 

[infection]

Eh, you may have had a lower opinion of the pick at the time, but it's certainly lower now that they have Luka instead of AD and nobody could have seen that coming.

This is kind of like someone saying, hey, you need disability insurance to protect yourself. Someone blows it off and then ends up having a windmill fall on their car, piercing through their windshield, severing your spine and leaving you a quadriplegic, then says, "Woah, buddy. Nobody could have predicted a windmill would break, pierce through a windshield, severe a spine and leave someone a quadriplegic. Nobody could have predicted that." It's entirely missing the point. Scissor mishap, air show disaster, Chinese organ thieves. There's a myriad of outliers that are improbable. But there are also an infinite combination of potential outliers and to say that one outlier is unlikely does not mean the total sum of all outliers is. I'll make my Phoenix trade post at some point in the future to get it on record so that nobody in 2031 can say "Bro, this is a trade that you can only recognize as having the potential for being this bad in hindsight. Nobody could have predicted _______."

The likelihood of them getting Luka is not the equivalent of the Lakers pick being more valuable than two seconds, that's absurd to believe those things are equivalent. Raise your hand if you said that two seconds was better than the Lakers first back then, I'll call you a liar.

My biggest issue that I repeated numerous times is that we may not even get a pick. Either the Lakers are decent and you're getting a pick in the 20s or beyond, or they're horrible and you get nothing, or they're in between in what I'd call the danger zone, where after the lottery you're either really happy with your mid-first round pick or you traded a bunch of vets with some value (and allowed LA to salary dump) while also throwing in two second round picks and then coming out of the deal with one second round pick. I consistently said that pick needed to be the first one to be moved and that its value will be most realized as a currency in another deal and while the perception of its value is still higher than its actual value.

Things change fast in the NBA. We were recently patting ourselves on the back of what we saw as owning two franchises' drafts for multiple years and now we're referring to these picks as "basically second rounders" and the most valuable assets we have are our own picks. How would people have felt about the deals if we saw the current trajectories of these franchises? Sure, many will say we still got the best value. But the value as we appraise it now is most certainly not the appraised value of those packages when we made these deals. And it takes no hindsight, or at least it shouldn't take hindsight to recognize how quickly values can change. Pretending status quo is fixed and projections can be reliably built upon it is one of the biggest flaws in asset management.

Tl;dr we had no business being the ones to throw two second rounders into that deal. It didn't take a genius to see that. There was plenty of "lol they're second rounders, who cares?" people. Now that we have the 31st pick we sent out in a trade doesn't matter because "lol who could have predicted that" is the dumb scenario of not having insurance because "lololol nobody can predict this unlikely event from happening" as if that's the only unlikely event that could have ever happened and there aren't infinite combinations of unlikely events that could play out.

 

[KqWIN]

This is kind of like someone saying, hey, you need disability insurance to protect yourself. Someone blows it off and then ends up having a windmill fall on their car, piercing through their windshield, severing your spine and leaving you a quadriplegic, then says, "Woah, buddy. Nobody could have predicted a windmill would break, pierce through a windshield, severe a spine and leave someone a quadriplegic. Nobody could have predicted that." It's entirely missing the point. Scissor mishap, air show disaster, Chinese organ thieves. There's a myriad of outliers that are improbable. But there are also an infinite combination of potential outliers and to say that one outlier is unlikely does not mean the total sum of all outliers is. I'll make my Phoenix trade post at some point in the future to get it on record so that nobody in 2031 can say "Bro, this is a trade that you can only recognize as having the potential for being this bad in hindsight. Nobody could have predicted _______."


My biggest issue that I repeated numerous times is that we may not even get a pick. Either the Lakers are decent and you're getting a pick in the 20s or beyond, or they're horrible and you get nothing, or they're in between in what I'd call the danger zone, where after the lottery you're either really happy with your mid-first round pick or you traded a bunch of vets with some value (and allowed LA to salary dump) while also throwing in two second round picks and then coming out of the deal with one second round pick. I consistently said that pick needed to be the first one to be moved and that its value will be most realized as a currency in another deal and while the perception of its value is still higher than its actual value.

Things change fast in the NBA. We were recently patting ourselves on the back of what we saw as owning two franchises' drafts for multiple years and now we're referring to these picks as "basically second rounders" and the most valuable assets we have are our own picks. How would people have felt about the deals if we saw the current trajectories of these franchises? Sure, many will say we still got the best value. But the value as we appraise it now is most certainly not the appraised value of those packages when we made these deals. And it takes no hindsight, or at least it shouldn't take hindsight to recognize how quickly values can change. Pretending status quo is fixed and projections can be reliably built upon it is one of the biggest flaws in asset management.

Uh...like most analogies on this forum I find that to be not relevant at all....Anyways, it's very simple. We acknowledge that bad things can happen. The Lakers getting Luka is one of the most extreme bad outcomes for our pick that could be possible. I think you're being hysterical if you think that is the equivalent of the Jazz getting a Lakers pick that was not worth two seconds at that time. If you still feel that way, we'll have to agree to disagree as there is nothing that could make me see the value as such. Any pick under 20 (and probably a few spots lower than that) is worth more than two seconds of any kind. To act like Luka and any outcome between 5 and 20 is the same probability is insane to me.

You can continue ranting on how you think that Lakers pick was overrated, and I might agree with you, but I cannot take you seriously if you are going to raise your hand and said you valued our two seconds more than that UTA first in that moment. It is not pretending the status quo is fixed to say that Luka is hindsight 2020. There's a way to say that the Laker pick was overrated without being so extreme.

 

[NUMBERICA]

Conley looked cooked in his last year in Utah. Him still being a positive player at age 37 is crazy.

What? He was the engine behind the Jazz playing way above expectations.

 

[NUMBERICA]

What a **** show. We had no business being the ones including second rounders in that deal, let alone two. Now we’ve traded something worth more than a late first. I remember a lot of people always dismissing the lack of value in second rounders picks in Ainge deals, jettisoning them or leaving them on the table in other deals. And to your point about it being nice to have other people’s seconds to play with… yeah. “They’re just second rounders. Why so upset lol.”

Seems like it would’ve been easy to tuck a 2nd into each of the Gobert and Mitchell deals as a closing cost and nobody would’ve batted an eye. Probably could’ve done some of the weird red paper clip stuff they pulled this year at some point over the previous two seasons.

Ainge got a great start on the rebuild and ever since has mostly been whiffing. Hopefully he finally starts landing on some moves because right now it feels like he should’ve been used just to clean house and then move on.

 

[SoberasHotRod]

What? He was the engine behind the Jazz playing way above expectations.

I remember starting a thread about how I didn't think Conley was cooked. Which proves I was right, but also that there were many who thought he was.

FWIW, I also thought it was pretty clear that NAW had turned himself in to a decent role player and that it was a mistake to throw him in to the deal.

 

[KqWIN]

What? He was the engine behind the Jazz playing way above expectations.

Yeah, that seems like extreme revisionist history. Especially because I know certain people were glazing Conley saying he was the reason why Lauri got good. Cough....Cy.

But the real reason the trade should have been made beforehand was to start the tank earlier. We salvaged the tank by getting the trade done at deadline, and that allowed us to keep our pick and have TH, but the reward for tanking would have been more if we had shipped off the vets earlier. Given what we got, it's hard to argue that we would have gotten significantly less before the season (probably more if we're being honest)....and that's before knowing knowing Luka would be a Laker. The prize of that season was our pick and we should have realized that instead of trying to eek out extra value that we likely didn't get anyways.

 

[SoberasHotRod]

I remember starting a thread about how I didn't think Conley was cooked. Which proves I was right, but also that there were many who thought he was.

FWIW, I also thought it was pretty clear that NAW had turned himself in to a decent role player and that it was a mistake to throw him in to the deal.

Nevermind that was the off season before the trade and Conley was traded mid season. You were right it was clear at the deadline that Conley was still good.