Eh, I think that two lessons that the Jazz have learned about drafting are:
1. Mental make up is the most important "upside" measurement. Jazz want competitors with talent. Trey Lyles is oozing with talent, but has the mental tenacity of a 15 year old. You can have a player that checks off all of the analytics but will never set or fight through a back screen. We need hard mother ******* that want to win and won't complain about 3 hour practices. Trey Lyles is more talented with more upside than Crowder, but Crowder shows up to play and will bleed if that is required of him, which makes him the far better Jazzman. The jazz selecting Allen may be less of an endorsement of him than an indictment on the rest of the talented players that were mocked around him. Allen could very well have been the baseline and none of the other players showed they could be more in the workouts and scouting.
2. There comes a point where you can't be developing players for 5 years, especially as a small market team. There may be some gems in the rough at the spot where the Jazz drafted Allen, but teams are likely to put in an entire rookie contract and probably an extension before they find it out. And for every gem found eight more teams are going to extend a dud. There is a 10% chance that one of these dudes with upside that were drafted after Allen will become an all-star and a secondary scoring option. But at 21 you are looking for a solid contributor off the bench. If you get that you won. Chances are, the Jazz got that.
It wasn't a "deep draft." This was nowhere near last year's draft where a Mitchell was available at 13. Sometimes "there are picks at 21 which could have been in the lottery" means that your late lottery sucks.
