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OKC as a blueprint

slc said:
OKC also had three MVP's they traded away
Durant, Harden, Westbrook
How do you explain that
How many championships might they have won if they kept them?
Do realize it was salary issues Could not pay three MVP's max money but seems unfair if there were all drafted by you
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That was a long past era of OKC basketball. I struggle to understand why it's relevant to the current context.
 
Strutter said:
OKC traded for SGA. And the Pacers traded for Siakam and Haliburton.
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And we traded for Mitchell. We also traded for Burke. And we traded up for Deron. Lots of trades happen that don't end up in championships. If OKC is the blueprint, how exactly do we follow it to the same success? So much of this is chance and luck. Tough to say that's how to build a championship team. What are the steps? How can other teams take the same steps?
 
Strutter said:
Who are all these first-rounders (meaning guaranteed contracts) that OKC abandoned before year 3. Let's go back a decade and look at first round picks that the Thunder didn't hold onto.

Josh Huestis? 3 years. Cameron Payne? 3 years. Terrance Ferguson? 3 years. Darius Bazley? 5 years. Josh Giddey? 3 years. Tre Mann? 2.5 years.

That leaves Mitch McGary who left the NBA after 2 seasons after some drug problems.
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Josh Giddey
Tre Mann
Pokusevski
Dillon Jones

They didnt fit because they weren't two way players or for whatever reason and they cut ties quickly and swapped them with Dort, Wiggins, Joe, and Wallace.
 
jazznik said:
OKC just won a championship. They provided a very good realistic template for the Jazz on how to assemble a contender: OKC is a small-market team in a less-then-desirable city without a rich owner. They won by having an MVP-level player (SGA)+ 2 All-Stars (Williams, Holmgren)+ 3 above-average-starters (Hartenstein, Caruso, Dort) + quality bench (Wallace, Jaylin Williams, Wiggins, Joe). Of note, the Thunder has only two large 30+ million contracts in SGA and Hartenstein.

Now, lets look at what the Jazz have. We can argue that in the best case scenario Lauri would be equal to Jalen Williams and Kessler can become our Hartenstein. Being very optimistic again, we can argue that the group of Hendricks, Collier, Cody and Flip can produce 1 above-average starter and 2 quality bench players. Even if everything goes right the Jazz are still short of an MVP-level player (SGA), a second All-Star (Holmgren), 1 above-average starter and a couple of quality bench players.

What's more, keeping Lauri and Kessler means that the Jazz already have their two big contracts by paying them. That means that the only realistic scenario for the Jazz to become realistic contenders is for Ace +2026 pick to reach the level of SGA and Holmgren in 3-4 years, while still being on their rookie contracts. And that the Jazz will somehow successfully pick up or develop several key role players (Caruso, Wallace).

Now, how realistic is that? It looks like paying Lauri and Kessler big money really constricts realistic options for the Jazz to become real contenders with them on the roster. And trading one or both of them would not help much either: the Jazz will have to replace their production with someone else. It does not make me very optimistic about the Jazz becoming a real contender any time soon. Can anyone point out the holes in my reasoning and show that the Jazz do in fact have a realistic path to contending?
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Nice to dream but you lost me at Lauri equal to J Dub.
 
infection said:
Over the past decade or more, I've often expressed frustration with the utilization of recency bias in terms of having a template on winning, where we look at whoever last won the championship, employing a survival bias, and declare that to be the new and/or only formula for winning in "today's NBA." I do understand that you're drawing upon some similarities between the franchises that are relevant so I'm not 100% specifically stating this directed at you but more the larger context. Formulas don't work until they do. Winning a championship is such a rare event (one per year, and only ten in a decade) that the sample size is really difficult to extrapolate in terms of what works and what doesn't but we like to speak very definitively on what does or doesn't work for building a true contender.
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That is a very valid observation. Unfortunately, the game style and financial framework in the NBA change every several years and nobody has the luxury of waiting for the sample size to increase and only after that start making moves based on the sufficient". Teams react and copy each other very quickly. But you can increase the sample a bit by adding to it another small-market team that recently went to the Finals, the 203-24 Mavs. The Mavs were built pretty similar: two large contracts , 2 All Stars (and one of them was a top-5 player) and many two-way players on low contracts, including two key players on rookie salaries. They were able to get away with Doncic being bad on defense because he was together with Jokic and LeBron one of the best offensive players at the time..

What the Jazz has been doing is the exact opposite of how those three teams were constructed. They gave a large contract to the player whose prime will not be aligned with Ace and the 2026 pick. They drafted a bunch of one-dimensional players who will be inevitably targeted in the playoffs, they keep trading for expensive vets like Sexton, Collins and Andersen. Trading for Svi and holding on him simply defies logic...

I think the Jazz are not building a true contender but rather a team "good enough" for playoffs and fans. Which is fine with me but many people on this board eagerly anticipating the emergence of a true contender are setting themselves up for disappointment. Anyway, the Deron-Boozer Jazz were fun and I will not mind watching the assembly of a similar team.
 
The Jazz Wonderbra said:
Josh Giddey
Tre Mann
Pokusevski
Dillon Jones

They didnt fit because they weren't two way players or for whatever reason and they cut ties quickly and swapped them with Dort, Wiggins, Joe, and Wallace.
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So you didn't even read my post I guess? Giddey was there 3 years. Tre Mann was there 2.5 years (it's right there in the part you quoted). Poku was there freaking 5 years. And Dillon Jones was someone they traded 5 2nd round picks for and then, yes, decided to move him along after a year.

Keyonte George has been here 2 years.
 
LogGrad98 said:
And we traded for Mitchell. We also traded for Burke. And we traded up for Deron. Lots of trades happen that don't end up in championships. If OKC is the blueprint, how exactly do we follow it to the same success? So much of this is chance and luck. Tough to say that's how to build a championship team. What are the steps? How can other teams take the same steps?
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A whole bunch is chance and luck on multiple levels. I think it is a bit humorous that every year when a team wins the title the idea of them as a blueprint comes out. There are lots of ways to get there. One of them is not trading away future HOF players.
 
gomretat said:
A whole bunch is chance and luck on multiple levels. I think it is a bit humorous that every year when a team wins the title the idea of them as a blueprint comes out. There are lots of ways to get there. One of them is not trading away future HOF players.
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But if you don’t trade them, you might lose them in three years for nothing and then suck really bad for 7-8 years. We’re much better off with an assortment of late first rounders and irrelevant pick swaps because we suck more than the teams we could swap with.
 
gomretat said:
A whole bunch is chance and luck on multiple levels. I think it is a bit humorous that every year when a team wins the title the idea of them as a blueprint comes out. There are lots of ways to get there. One of them is not trading away future HOF players.
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Actually, OKC traded away future hall of fame players. Lots of them.
 
Strutter said:
So you didn't even read my post I guess? Giddey was there 3 years. Tre Mann was there 2.5 years (it's right there in the part you quoted). Poku was there freaking 5 years. And Dillon Jones was someone they traded 5 2nd round picks for and then, yes, decided to move him along after a year.

Keyonte George has been here 2 years.
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The point is when it isnt the right piece, move on. Thats all. Not going to write a journal entry on top of your book long posts.

If you want a quality team then you have to dump the baggage and pick uo quality winning pieces.
 
The Jazz Wonderbra said:
The point is when it isnt the right piece, move on. Thats all. Not going to write a journal entry on top of your book long posts.

If you want a quality team then you have to dump the baggage and pick uo quality winning pieces.
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Except if you keep continually turning over the roster, you suck, even if you have good players. It is damn hard to build a team without some consistent pieces. I think the Jazz have decided that Lauri, Kessler, and Ace plus whoever they pick up this year is the base. Everything else will be puttied in around that.

The best way to get to contender status is to be a "treadmill team" with assets. It is easily the most repeatable.
 
The Jazz Wonderbra said:
The point is when it isnt the right piece, move on. Thats all. Not going to write a journal entry on top of your book long posts.

If you want a quality team then you have to dump the baggage and pick uo quality winning pieces.
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"book long" lmao

Thought you wanted to talk about OKC as a blueprint like the rest of us and not just repeat how much you hate Keyonte over and over.
 
fishonjazz said:
Actually, OKC traded away future hall of fame players. Lots of them.
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Elaborate. Since not many guys make the HOF it would be difficult to trade lots of future HOF players. I think the Harden trade for sure, though I am not sure how they avoid that one wit the cap space - which was not our issue at all.
 
gomretat said:
Elaborate. Since not many guys make the HOF it would be difficult to trade lots of future HOF players. I think the Harden trade for sure, though I am not sure how they avoid that one wit the cap space - which was not our issue at all.
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Also Paul George, which is how they got SGA. That trade kinda mirrors what happened with the Mitchell trade for Lauri, but while Lauri blossomed into an all-star, SGA blossomed into an MVP-caliber player.
 
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