Tremendous Upside
Well-Known Member
As I said earlier, Ainge obviously didn't know back then that Lauri would quickly turn into this. Nobody did. But I'm sure he saw major untapped potential... that's why he's DA. Hell, it's not like Lauri was an unknown quantity. He made the All Rookie First Team and averaged damn near 20/10 in his second season. Back then he did look like a future All Star. My guess is that Danny had him penciled in as a building block.Plus if cleveland saw this level of play coming from markennan then they wouldnt have included a bunch of picks and sexton and ochai in the deal.
Hell they probably would have kept markennan and gave us garland or mobley or something instead.
Lauri would look pretty sweet with donovan.
Also how dumb would ainge have had to be if he knew how good Lauri would be and waited so long into the off season to acquire him along with everything else we got.
What if a different team would have known that lauri was available for trade and swooped in and got to him first? That would have sucked.
Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
For Utah, I'd say the main priorities in the deal were picks and Lauri. They were buying low on Sexton, who couldn't be guaranteed to ever regain his athleticism and wasn't going to be returning to his former top dog role anyway. Ainge brought him in as a future bench player or trade asset (if it turned out his knee healed well). Ochai was a total throw-in, the Cavs had no use for him with Mitchell coming in. He wasn't gonna get any minutes there.