Apparently Zubac has an ankle injury from being traded to the Pacers.
Yep, and no one would care if it takes him five games to get better. That should have been the way with JJJ either. Because stuff like that has been normalized by now. And throwing games away in real time in front of the cameras is still not.Apparently Zubac has an ankle injury from being traded to the Pacers.
Whether the league can tolerate this in the long run is a legitimate question.
For now, and correct me if I'm wrong, the Jazz are following league rules.
I don't think the league has a lot of leeway to arbitrarily change its rules midway through the season just because things are unseemly. Rule changes of this magnitude have to be negotiated among/agreed upon by the league collectively (team voting) in its annual meetings.
Stop us if you've heard this before: the NBA is apparently unhappy with its league-wide tanking epidemic. After several attempts at lottery reform and the adoption of the Play-In Tournament, the league, according to ESPN, is considering several more drastic steps to attack the problem. Solutions being considered include:
While each of these concepts at least has some merit, the drawbacks in each case are often just as significant if not worse.
- Limiting the legal protections on traded first-round picks to top-four or 14 or above, theoretically eliminating the incentive to tank down to a specific slot or try to lose when a Play-In berth is at stake.
- No longer allowing teams to draft in the top four in consecutive seasons.
- Locking lottery positions after March 1.
Apparently Zubac has an ankle injury from being traded to the Pacers.
I think if push came to shove, the Jazz would clearly have less plausibility for sitting JJJ (compared to Zubac, AD, Trae who each had real injuries before their trades).The Jazz could have delayed playing JJJ for some time after acquiring him and nobody would have cared, but they got excited and now they have a longer runway of having to play these games.
Zubac had a baby on the same day as the trade, so I'm actually pretty cool with him getting a real paternity leave.I think if push came to shove, the Jazz would clearly have less plausibility for sitting JJJ (compared to Zubac, AD, Trae who each had real injuries before their trades).
I'm sure if the Jazz wanted to they could have found some injury to say that JJJ needed time for though.