Keeping Lauri seems increasingly pointless

[zags422]

I think I somewhat disagree with this. No one forgets how to shoot. His shot volume was down last year with the tank. His FT% remains steady. I think the only question that pertains to Lauri staying or getting traded is how content he is in current tank years and how much will he affect wins this upcoming year. As the Jazz head into the 2026 season, does Markkanen accelerate the rebuild? I think he does. There were so many games this past year where we were competitive. Having ace in year 2 and hopefully a top 3 pick for 2026 season could be very interesting with an experience 7’ sharp shooter still in his prime. I’m more curious about how Kessler fits but in the west having players to corral Wemby and Chet are an absolute going forward. I for one am interested how this core looks like in 2 years.

WCJ/Collier
‘26 draft pick/George
Ace/Williams/sensabaugh
Markkanen/Hendricks
Kessler/Filipowski/Hendricks/Markkanen

That’s a formidable lineup

 

[JazzFever]

I think I somewhat disagree with this. No one forgets how to shoot. His shot volume was down last year with the tank. His FT% remains steady. I think the only question that pertains to Lauri staying or getting traded is how content he is in current tank years and how much will he affect wins this upcoming year. As the Jazz head into the 2026 season, does Markkanen accelerate the rebuild? I think he does. There were so many games this past year were we were competitive. Having ace in year 2 and hopefully a top 3 pick for 2026 season could be very interesting with an experience 7’ sharp shooter still in his prime. I’m more curious about how Kessler fits but in the west having players to corral Wendy and Chet are an absolute going forward. I for one am interested how this core looks like in 2 years.

WCJ/Collier
‘26 draft pick/George
Ace/Williams/sensabaugh
Markkanen/Hendricks
Kessler/Filipowski/Hendricks/Markkanen

That’s a formidable lineup

In a league where wings are gold, we’re well placed for the future…

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

Minimum team salary is a terrible argument. You can achieve that in many other ways besides letting a star player waste his prime and lose all his trade value. At this point, the trade value is probably so low you have to keep him. I'm not sure there is a single team who really wants to trade for Lauri at the moment. It was a massive failure to keep him through the tank season. The "we don't have to trade Lauri" crowd looks so silly now—yeah, we didn't have to trade him, but we really should have.

Lauri playing well is at odds with our tanking strategy. One has to take a hit, and if Lauri doesn't play well he will not have any trade value.

Part of the this was the optionality (I get it... its a hiss and a byword) but everything since the Lauri extension broke the wrong way basically.

- Cody was trash... if we had a rookie who popped immediately then maybe you want a guy in his prime.
- Taylor snapped his leg in half... similar argument to the above.
- Maybe we land Cooper or Dylan and we try to be good sooner than later.

It all went the wrong way... including Lauri playing bad. This was all possible obviously but I can at least see what they were going for I guess. I also thing the Warriors offer was like a couple firsts and a couple swaps and JK/Moody... which is something i still think would be on the table during the year if Lauri comes back and shows a little bit.

I guess the Lauri extension is like 4th or 5th on my gripes with the last couple years.

 

[Strutter]

Minimum team salary is a terrible argument. You can achieve that in many other ways besides letting a star player waste his prime and lose all his trade value. At this point, the trade value is probably so low you have to keep him. I'm not sure there is a single team who really wants to trade for Lauri at the moment. It was a massive failure to keep him through the tank season. The "we don't have to trade Lauri" crowd looks so silly now—yeah, we didn't have to trade him, but we really should have.

Lauri playing well is at odds with our tanking strategy. One has to take a hit, and if Lauri doesn't play well he will not have any trade value.

So you believe we would be in a significantly better situation if we had Moses Moody and a couple protected firsts and seconds? Because it kind of looks like that's the highest return we were looking at. I was okay with trading Lauri, and still think we should have. I just think the idea that holding Lauri has already proven to be a pointless move is a silly idea. We won't really know for another year or two, maybe it will be the key to a quicker playoff return after a string of hard tanking seasons.

 

[KqWIN]

Part of the this was the optionality (I get it... its a hiss and a byword) but everything since the Lauri extension broke the wrong way basically.

- Cody was trash... if we had a rookie who popped immediately then maybe you want a guy in his prime.
- Taylor snapped his leg in half... similar argument to the above.
- Maybe we land Cooper or Dylan and we try to be good sooner than later.

It all went the wrong way... including Lauri playing bad. This was all possible obviously but I can at least see what they were going for I guess. I also thing the Warriors offer was like a couple firsts and a couple swaps and JK/Moody... which is something i still think would be on the table during the year if Lauri comes back and shows a little bit.

I guess the Lauri extension is like 4th or 5th on my gripes with the last couple years.

I guess we’ll never really know what the offer was, but in my mind it’s the one that Shams reported. And everyone was hysterical that we should only take every single pick possible plus Podz+Moody. Yeah….I would have taken something short of that. GSW picks post Curry would have been awesome but that ship has sailed.

Whatever you think his actual trade value is, I think it’s safe to say he lost a ton and it’s become exceedingly more difficult to trade Lauri on his new deal. We’re kinda stuck with it. Maybe that will pay dividends, maybe the prime of his career is wasted here.

 

[KqWIN]

So you believe we would be in a significantly better situation if we had Moses Moody and a couple protected firsts and seconds? Because it kind of looks like that's the highest return we were looking at. I was okay with trading Lauri, and still think we should have. I just think the idea that holding Lauri has already proven to be a pointless move is a silly idea. We won't really know for another year or two, maybe it will be the key to a quicker playoff return after a string of hard tanking seasons.

Did you read the post you replied to? Serious question. I’m not sure you read anything I wrote in that post.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

I guess we’ll never really know what the offer was, but in my mind it’s the one that Shams reported. And everyone was hysterical that we should only take every single pick possible plus Podz+Moody. Yeah….I would have taken something short of that. GSW picks post Curry would have been awesome but that ship has sailed.

Whatever you think his actual trade value is, I think it’s safe to say he lost a ton and it’s become exceedingly more difficult to trade Lauri on his new deal. We’re kinda stuck with it. Maybe that will pay dividends, maybe the prime of his career is wasted here.

Probably true. To make another argument on your side... we'd also likely be sitting with 30-40M in cap space right now which would likely produce some nice benefits in facilitating deals.

I think we have a path to recover from the mess up. But it might just stay what it is.

 

[KqWIN]

Probably true. To make another argument on your side... we'd also likely be sitting with 30-40M in cap space right now which would likely produce some nice benefits in facilitating deals.

I think we have a path to recover from the mess up. But it might just stay what it is.

It’s not tragic….but we definitely fumbled the situation. It’s painful because of everything we may have lost in a potential trade, but also because it generally sucks for Lauri’s career and it’s another reminder of how useless those half tank years were. Something we gained during those year is Lauri’s value. We didn’t capitalize or take advantage of that.

 

[Strutter]

Did you read the post you replied to? Serious question. I’m not sure you read anything I wrote in that post.

Did you read mine? Lmao.

You said we should've traded him and because we didn't that it's a massive failure. And if we're not significantly better making the best Lauri trade that was reportedly out there, then how could it be a massive failure? And the second half was discussing the whole point of the original post: I think we should've traded but its premature to say it might not prove helpful later.

 

[slc]

It’s not tragic….but we definitely fumbled the situation. It’s painful because of everything we may have lost in a potential trade, but also because it generally sucks for Lauri’s career and it’s another reminder of how useless those half tank years were. Something we gained during those year is Lauri’s value. We didn’t capitalize or take advantage of that.

It seems like one thing Jazz have done well is manage contracts and salary cap
They are not in contract or salary cap hell like a lot of teams
So the situation may not be hopeless
They may have made some mistakes but they may be able to recover quickly

 

[KqWIN]

Did you read mine? Lmao.

You said we should've traded him and because we didn't that it's a massive failure. And if we're not significantly better making the best Lauri trade that was reportedly out there, then how could it be a massive failure? And the second half was discussing the whole point of the original post: I think we should've traded but its premature to say it might not prove helpful later.

Moody and a couple protected firsts was not the highest deal that was reportedly out there. It was all the picks. And yes, we'd be in a significantly better position if we had GSW's entire draft future.

And regardless of what you think the trade value then actually was….its certainly less now. So if that’s all you think we would have gotten, we now just have a negative contract.

 

[KqWIN]

It seems like one thing Jazz have done well is manage contracts and salary cap
They are not in contract or salary cap hell like a lot of teams
So the situation may not be hopeless
They may have made some mistakes but they may be able to recover quickly

They aren't in salary hell because most of their players are rookies. Sexton was a bad contract, Clarkson was a bad contract, Collins was a bad contract, and Lauri's is becoming very questionable to say the least.