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My hot take on what I'd do in the off-season.

We should look at big changes but we won't. One thing that I have learned is DL would rather try and drive something into the ground and be right than make changes and admit he was off. He couldn't even handle Mike being moved to the bench.

We will run it back and make changes around the edges of the roster.

With Johnny Bryant leaving I'd like to see if we could coax Igor back. We should keep some of the g league guys. We will look to move Ed and address backup 5... outside of that we will do nuthin.

Basically hope we pull another good late pick out of our *** otherwise this is kind of our ceiling.
I think the DL/Snyder dynamic is an odd one, even if they don't. What I mean by that is DL is definitely the 401k/index fund guy who wants to be slow and steady, put the money in without thinking about it, trust the strategy, then look at long-term gains. QS is a day trader, but he comes in the skin of appearing as a long-term-investment guy. His gains and losses are all over the place, but when mistaken for a long-term strategy, many are reassured to just trust the long-term vision. Inevitably, there will be a few days where the runs are huge, and the gentle reminder is, "see, we told you to be patient," but just as those few days of runs are high, there can be a couple days that sink any gains. But those highs definitely feel good, but unless the timing for when to get in and out of the market is perfect, the decisions typically aren't going to coincide with the best strategy.

We need to stop treating it like the dichotomy. It's cool that we want to keep pushing the sex machine stuff, but ultimately the best preparation for going deep into the post-season is to just get out there as early as possible and win games. That's it. Focus on the here and now and stop trying to think 25 moves ahead. We kept hearing that Quin costing us games with running the iso-ball was getting us ready for the playoffs, and that the regular season games didn't matter as much because he was hatching some genius schemes.

The post-season just came and went.

He's a good coach. But perhaps we could use more of the passionate Quin and less of the sex machine Quin.
 
As I see it, the Jazz have only the MLE (mid-level exception) and the MIN (minimum player contract) to offer to free agents. We have our draft picks, and the possibility of doing a trade or two.



Step 1. Trade Mike Conley to Cleveland for Kevin Love. Why does Utah do it? We need rebounding, we need outside shooting and the Mike Conley-Donovan connection seemed more disconnected than not most of the time. Utah needs to push to compete in the 2020-2021 season, the Warriors will make the playoffs again this year, and it's going to be tight, but hopefully another team might be able to slip past them in the West as they try to integrate their new players (and it still might be impossible).

Step 2. Sign Aron Baynes for the MIN. Like Gobert, he's a fantastic screen-assist guy, and is a veteran who hits 35% from 3 and 80% from the FT line.

Step 3. Re-sign Jordan Clarkson - the Jazz have his Bird rights, so this is easy and a no-brainer.

Step 4. Sign the best mid-level shooter you can get - there is rumors that teams will look to dump cash this year, especially with not knowing when the season is even going to open and whether or not they will be even be able to fill arenas. There is the idea that there may not be a lot of buyers in this year's free agency and that will drive prices down (I doubt it, but we will see). The Jazz might want to look at:

Rodney Hood, Jerami Grant*, Evan Fournier, Goran Dragic, Davis Bertrans

Step 5. Draft your best athlete with the longest wing-span. Maybe Patrick Williams 6-7 w 6-11 wingspan SG/SF. Aaron Nesmith 6-6 w 6'10 span. Saddiq Bey 6'8" w 7'0"wingspan. Tyler Bey 6'7 w 7'1" wingspan.

Jazz Roster:

C- Rudy Gobert, Aron Baynes
PF - Kevin Love, Juwan Morgan
SF - Bojan Bogdanovic, Tyler Bey
SG - Evan Fournier, Joe Ingles
PG - Donovan Mitchell, Jordan Clarkson
That starting lineup is a bottom-10 defense.
 
The thing is, if we keep everyone, I doubt we make it to the playoff next season with Curry/Klay coming back, Suns riding on their momentum from the bubble, and wolves figuring it out with all the talents they've had. People failed to realize just how flawed this roster really is and what an amazing job Quin has done to keep us in it.
We were swept by the Nuggets during the regular season.
 
I think the DL/Snyder dynamic is an odd one, even if they don't. What I mean by that is DL is definitely the 401k/index fund guy who wants to be slow and steady, put the money in without thinking about it, trust the strategy, then look at long-term gains. QS is a day trader, but he comes in the skin of appearing as a long-term-investment guy. His gains and losses are all over the place, but when mistaken for a long-term strategy, many are reassured to just trust the long-term vision. Inevitably, there will be a few days where the runs are huge, and the gentle reminder is, "see, we told you to be patient," but just as those few days of runs are high, there can be a couple days that sink any gains. But those highs definitely feel good, but unless the timing for when to get in and out of the market is perfect, the decisions typically aren't going to coincide with the best strategy.

We need to stop treating it like the dichotomy. It's cool that we want to keep pushing the sex machine stuff, but ultimately the best preparation for going deep into the post-season is to just get out there as early as possible and win games. That's it. Focus on the here and now and stop trying to think 25 moves ahead. We kept hearing that Quin costing us games with running the iso-ball was getting us ready for the playoffs, and that the regular season games didn't matter as much because he was hatching some genius schemes.

The post-season just came and went.

He's a good coach. But perhaps we could use more of the passionate Quin and less of the sex machine Quin.

I get where you are headed but I kinda disagree on Quin... maybe in the X's and O's he is trying things but I think he has been kinda vanilla and that was part of the problem. The execution of the defensive strategy from games 1-6 wasn't perfect... but the whole "hey if Jamal hits shots in the mid range on pullup and if Jokic hits wide *** open threes then we will lose... the numbers say we won't lose". But we lose a lot to team with shot making guards because they go off on us. There are generally no adjustments. He seems to say we will do this one thing and that is it. Nick Nurse tries zone and all sorts of ****. Quin is more cut from the cloth of Bud... where this is what we do and it will work against 65% of the teams in the league.

Was listening to Locke talk about our options and say we haven't blitzed the pick and roll all season why do it now... He's right but that means you failed to try things earlier.

Personnel is where he really failed. YOU were the champion of the TB can't play in the playoffs... I knew it was an issue. He really never tried much with Morgan or Brantley as front court options. Niang was the safe vanilla option that was likely to struggle to stay on the court. Morgan and Brantley theoretically could give us something we needed... but we never tried them. Same thing with Mudiay and Oni. Mudiay is the better player (I think) but the things he wanted him to do weren't in his bag.

DL is very much the safe, self preservation guy. Quin is viewed as a super genius but I think he misses on some fairly obvious things. Maybe its overthinking things. He seems to want the beautiful game Spurs basketball but that only works with super intelligent players. Hell even Popovich adjusts his systems and philosophies to fit his personnel.

I think they are both very much the same tier of good... you can definitely do a lot worse but they are probably a little over-rated.
 
I’m too pissed and lazy right now to get into the subtleties of the cap, our contracts, and then imagine how much flexibility we MIGHT have. Instead I see pretty quickly how little flexibility there isn’t.

The Conley trade is looking like one of the worst trades league-wide over a 5-10 year span. And it came at a supremely bad time with respect to Donovan and Rudy’s next contracts and the opportunity to vault the team into the next tier. Conley was supposed to do that, but he’s done the opposite: he’s hamstrung the defense while playing a miniature version of year-3 Rodney Hood on offense—for $35 million. It’s hard to come back from this trade—since he’s definitely opting in AND our org doesn’t have what it takes to move him to the bench (where he might actually help the team [ignoring the price, of course]).

In each of the last two seasons, I think we’ve tried to decrease our dependence on Joe. But they haven’t figured out how to do it. I think this postseason shows that we really have to crack that nut. Even if we keep him in the starting lineup, we need to find another PnR creator.

Maybe this is a part of Mitchell’s evolution? Dunno, but right now he’s resorting to too many dangerous outlet passes after his initial and secondary reads get cut off. He isn’t getting to that third read often enough, especially once he gets deeper into the paint.

But, considering our financial situation, I’m not sure how we find this PnR guy AND fix the defense. If there was some magical combination of moves (dump Ed, move Tony, shave off a couple of the 1.5Mish contracts) that allowed us to bring back Favors and sign a guy like Torrey Craig, then maybe we have a competitive defense again. You’d have to nut up and move Conley to the bench, though. And you’d need more from Mitchell on defense

Mitchell/Conley
Joe/Clarkson/Oni
Royce/Craig/Brantley
Bogdanovic/Morgan/Favors
Gobert/Favors

You can bank a lot on the defensive positional flexibility of guys like Oni, Brantley, Royce, Craig, Morgan, and to some extent Favors. These guys can be plugged into a few different spots and we can recommit to our defensive identity.
 
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I get where you are headed but I kinda disagree on Quin... maybe in the X's and O's he is trying things but I think he has been kinda vanilla and that was part of the problem. The execution of the defensive strategy from games 1-6 wasn't perfect... but the whole "hey if Jamal hits shots in the mid range on pullup and if Jokic hits wide *** open threes then we will lose... the numbers say we won't lose". But we lose a lot to team with shot making guards because they go off on us. There are generally no adjustments. He seems to say we will do this one thing and that is it. Nick Nurse tries zone and all sorts of ****. Quin is more cut from the cloth of Bud... where this is what we do and it will work against 65% of the teams in the league.

Was listening to Locke talk about our options and say we haven't blitzed the pick and roll all season why do it now... He's right but that means you failed to try things earlier.

Personnel is where he really failed. YOU were the champion of the TB can't play in the playoffs... I knew it was an issue. He really never tried much with Morgan or Brantley as front court options. Niang was the safe vanilla option that was likely to struggle to stay on the court. Morgan and Brantley theoretically could give us something we needed... but we never tried them. Same thing with Mudiay and Oni. Mudiay is the better player (I think) but the things he wanted him to do weren't in his bag.

DL is very much the safe, self preservation guy. Quin is viewed as a super genius but I think he misses on some fairly obvious things. Maybe its overthinking things. He seems to want the beautiful game Spurs basketball but that only works with super intelligent players. Hell even Popovich adjusts his systems and philosophies to fit his personnel.

I think they are both very much the same tier of good... you can definitely do a lot worse but they are probably a little over-rated.
This. Thank you.
 
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