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2024-2025 Tank Race

I think where these probabilities play in is when we start talking about trading productive players for less than market value in order to potentially improve lottery odds. There are more parts of the equation than some consider.

Take Sexton for example:

What is his current entertainment value, how does he help current and future rookie contract players, what could his future role on a contending team be when we are ready for that, what is the chance we can retain him at that point, what is the potential replacement cost?

VS

how much is he hurting lottery odds, how might he be holding back rookie contract players, etc.
 
NUMBERICA said:
The other problem with free agency and trades is that real stars virtually never get traded before they’re 30 and star players will never be in play to sign with the Jazz before they’re 30 also. If we want to build something enduring, the draft is the only route we have. At least at this point. IMO.
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I think Ainge disagrees with you, but is probably being proven wrong currently.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
I think Ainge disagrees with you, but is probably being proven wrong currently.
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The most notable exception in spirit to some of the ideas above is Ainge and the Garnett/Allen acquisitions. However:
-Garnett and Allen were both well over 30
-they were acquired with picks acquired through tanking and a young budding star they developed and had RFA rights to.
 
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SoberasHotRod said:
I think where these probabilities play in is when we start talking about trading productive players for less than market value in order to potentially improve lottery odds. There are more parts of the equation than some consider.

Take Sexton for example:

What is his current entertainment value, how does he help current and future rookie contract players, what could his future role on a contending team be when we are ready for that, what is the chance we can retain him at that point, what is the potential replacement cost?

VS

how much is he hurting lottery odds, how might he be holding back rookie contract players, etc.
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This is why I've said I wouldn't even be opposed to trading away Sexton for nothing (expirings only). I think we could get more than that, but the way I think about it is....would we sign Sexton as FA to the contract he's on? To me that's a hard no, people would be up in arms if we did that this off season and for good reason. You can do the same thing for every other winning player on the roster....and they key considerations beyond the actual trade package are 1) what is the potential value they can give beyond two years 2) what is the damage they do to tanking in the next two years.
 
NUMBERICA said:
The most notable exception in spirit to some of the ideas above is Ainge and the Garnett/Allen acquisitions. However:
-Garnett and Allen were both well over 30
-they were acquired with picks acquired through tanking and a young budding star they developed and had RFA rights to.
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If we can acquire TWO first-ballot hall-of-famers (one of them an MVP) that are absolutely perfect fits with Lauri, even if they are ~32 years old, sure, let’s go for it. I have no idea on earth who those players are.
 
KqWIN said:
This is why I've said I wouldn't even be opposed to trading away Sexton for nothing (expirings only). I think we could get more than that, but the way I think about it is....would we sign Sexton as FA to the contract he's on? To me that's a hard no, people would be up in arms if we did that this off season and for good reason. You can do the same thing for every other winning player on the roster....and they key considerations beyond the actual trade package are 1) what is the potential value they can give beyond two years 2) what is the damage they do to tanking in the next two years.
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I think your conclusions are logical even if I'm probably on the other side of the equation. I think Sexton has tremendous entertainment value and is good for the rookie contract guys. I think there is a small chance he can be part of the next good team we put together. I don't think he hurts our draft odds that much. So in my equation we should not take much less than market value to move him.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
I think your conclusions are logical even if I'm probably on the other side of the equation. I think Sexton has tremendous entertainment value and is good for the rookie contract guys. I think there is a small chance he can be part of the next good team we put together. I don't think he hurts our draft odds that much. So in my equation we should not take much less than market value to move him.
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I don't think entertainment value should mean nothing, but personally I don't really enjoy watching Sexton play. I don't think Sexton is too damaging to lotto hopes, but it is non-zero and instead of thinking it as of a question of "is the tanking rolling or not" with a binary yes/no answer I think about it as losing 1-2 spots in lotto positioning. It's just not worth it to me. I also don't have too much attachment to Sexton and just generally believe there's a lot of players like him in the league and it's not too difficult to acquire someone like him down the road.

I would have been willing to give him the runway to potentially become a star, but the coaching staff/FO haven't been willing to do so. Current state of Sexton is half measure and I'd rather just get rid of him at this point.
 
KqWIN said:
I don't think entertainment value should mean nothing, but personally I don't really enjoy watching Sexton play. I don't think Sexton is too damaging to lotto hopes, but it is non-zero and instead of thinking it as of a question of "is the tanking rolling or not" with a binary yes/no answer I think about it as losing 1-2 spots in lotto positioning. It's just not worth it to me. I also don't have too much attachment to Sexton and just generally believe there's a lot of players like him in the league and it's not too difficult to acquire someone like him down the road.

I would have been willing to give him the runway to potentially become a star, but the coaching staff/FO haven't been willing to do so. Current state of Sexton is half measure and I'd rather just get rid of him at this point.
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I think that's all reasonable.
 
KqWIN said:
Every direction is hard, winning a championship is extremely difficult and requires a tremendous amount of luck regardless. But one of the reasons I think people overrate tanking is because it's easy to draw out that direct path that @idiot outlined. So easy to say, "tank->draft->superstar->championship". Other paths may be less clear, but that doesn't mean less likely or less effective. Not saying specifically, but I don't think people really stop and consider how unlikely the tanking plan is to work despite the apparent simplicity of it. For example, when we had Mitchell and Gobert....it's much easier to just say "tank and then we draft those players again" instead of building around the two superstars we already had and hitting on an unlikely move to get us to the destination.

Tanking is fine, it's definitely better than half tanking or whatever the hell we were doing the past two years. It's still highly overrated both in it's ease of execution and effectiveness IMO. There's a great deal of smugness about tanking=king that rubs me the wrong way.
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The smugness goes both ways though. The never tankers will mention how it doesn't ever work and then you give them 5-10 examples of it working and they are like "that wasn't tanking".

There is just no fool proof plan or even a good route you feel is dependable. Its just choosing between bad choices. I thought it was smart to pivot when we did but we should have been shuffling the deck the two years or so before that and made some tremendous errors prior to the tear down. Tony Jones has also said we didn't have the choice of keeping Donovan. So I think he had let them know behind the scenes but... shrug.

At this point I think anti-tankers have to think its the best route for us now but smart tankers also need to know this route almost surely leads to multi year pain and just an okayish outcome.

Side note - I think I have the solution to fix tanking but will wait for the pod to outline it. Remind me @Elizah Huge when we pod as I think I have stumbled onto a concept that would work.
 
Handlogten's Heros said:
Now do the other team building strategies. What exactly is the alternative? We are both doing the tank and middle build by holding other teams picks. If we opt to build through FA and trades we have the necessary fodder to do that. The tank is one component of what we opted to do. None of the strategies have high success rates. Even trading for stars has some catastrophic consequences and a low success rate.

Its likely a multi-year endeavor though as we haven't hit on the drafted star with our mid/late lotto or other picks (most likely) and haven't gotten the luck of jumping into the top 4 to have a better shot at drafting the star. At this point we have to likely sell off part of the infrastructure that would make it a quick rebuild.
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Exactly. What’s the alternative? The Jazz changed direction and now have a bunch of young players. And I don’t think Danny himself is a big fan of tanking. He has talked about this before—how hard it is to draft star players. But in our current situation, tanking makes the most sense, and that’s why we’re doing it. And I think it’ll be a two-year tank
 
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