Actually, it seems like having other teams set the market turned out to be not necessarily a horrible thing, because all the players that got the offers from other teams are actually outperforming their contracts. The problem is that every time KOC matched (Miles, Millsap), we made out pretty well, keeping good players, who later performed better than their salary. But the problem is, ever time we did not match, we looked like idiots. Mo Williams became an all star after KOC refused to match 2 mil dollar offer. And now Wes is playing like he will be one as well, and he is only paid mid-level.
What I fail to understand is why after having players for a whole year Jazz cannot make a better decision than Portland (Wes) or Cleveland (Mo) could about these players. And the funny thing is, Sloan raved about both Mo and Wes. So, FO knew we had good players, it’s just FO was unable to value them properly. Even when Portland signed Millsap to offer sheet, I remember KOC being furious that Jazz had to pay him that much, instead of thanking Portland for allowing him to keep Millsap for less than what he is worth. I just don’t get it. I mean Wes had a rookie year that’s actually not that far off from the rookie year Williams had. He then played even better in play-offs. He was regarded as the best defender on the team, according to the formula the team developed. Why is that not worth a mid-level?
When Jazz didn’t match, it was said that luxury tax this year is the reason. But then we turned around and signed old men Raja and Elson for only a million less than Wes’ CAP hit this year. Really we didn’t save much money on these luxury tax penalties. And next year we shed 18 mil of AK’s salary, so luxury tax will not be a problem (if there is lux tax even with new CBA, but either way, we are losing 18 mil dollar AK salary). The stupidity here, lack of foresight, and inability to evaluate your own players, especially after Mo Williams incident (and then Millsap and CJ matching turning out really well for us), is mind boggling. Jazz FO keeps making same mistakes over and over again.
I can reluctantly understand if you don’t have money to pay in luxury tax this year with AK making 18 mil, Okur, etc, you are forced to lose players (even though no one made KOC give Okur an extension when his stock was at all time high nor sign AK to MAX, when no other team could pay him that much, nor just dropping AK when he offered 0 dollar buy-out, nor trading AK for expiring TMac or Marion contracts). The kicker here is that we spent about the same luxury tax amount for old players (Raja, Elson) who are almost done as we would for young and improving Wes this year. I just can’t fathom this idiocy by FO. In the meantime old man Raja, who is signed for 3 years and will certainly not be getting any better, only worse, can’t even match what Wes gave us last year as a rookie. Isn’t it obvious now that KOC simply failed on this one? We didn’t save much money this year over old men we signed later, and we ended up with much inferior talent, while the guy who actually had great rookie year for us, almost like Deron, is putting up near all star numbers as a starter for a play-off team. And Wes actually wanted to be in Utah, unlike many other NBA players, who ranked Utah the least desirable place in NBA. Can anyone really disagree that KOC majorly screwed up here?
