On the record...

[Handlogten's Heros]

Got it... no one is implying or trying to devalue first round picks by comparing them to raffle/lotto tickets and half court shots. By saying all we got were a bunch of mediocre picks we aren't trying to downplay the great return we got for a great player.

First round picks are as valuable as drugs to a junky to some....

First round picks are raffle tickets or scratchers to others...

The truth is definitely in the middle. The quality of the picks is pretty amazing. I will take unprotected first round picks for teams that project to be good over protected first for teams that are mediocre all day. 3 unprotected picks and a swap plus a very lightly protected pick is some high quality ****. I get that its likely that those picks one yield one single player better than Rudy... but it likely yields a starter... maybe two. You will have team control for like 8 years and for 4 years they will be cheap.

And @Elizah Huge is also correct... it gives us the ability to increase the value of our own pick. The chances that we land an all-star caliber player with a top ten pick this year plus the 4-5 chances we get with the Minny picks is fairly solid... add in the additional value we can get selling off the pieces and using cap space and the return has a ton of potential. I'd be willing to bet the production/value we get from those assets over the next 10 years far exceeds the value Rudy would have offered over the next 4.

Its just kind of hilarious that we have people wringing their hands over getting draft picks for a guy we got by using draft picks. People acting like its lotto or lightening strike type of luck. Its lucky but its like 5-10% chances you find an all-star (or near all-star... like I'd consider an SGA as this type) with a first (increases based on where you pick obvi) not 1 in a million. You also have a 15-20% chance at a solid starter. Give yourself as many rolls of the dice as possible.

 

[gomretat]

When there is no avenue to get better. We had zero assets and zero picks.

Not if you trade Donny or even Donny and a few pieces. Plenty of ways to take a shot at getting some assets and staying relevant, especially with a new coach with a new start.

 

[gomretat]

Valid question and I think its different for each situation. The key element to me revolved around Donovan... "Him and Rudy don't have to be best buds" was a common refrain from Jazz folks... well guess what? They do have to enjoy working together and be more than just co-workers for it to work long term and for Donovan to be happy. If that relationship was awesome I think you keep those two together and try something different. It likely doesn't work even if they homies... but when there is so much tinder for a drama fire it doesn't take much to explode with where the relationship was.

Could have kept Rudy and pivoted around him I guess... but we got such a big return in trade its tough to say no and Don might not return back pieces that are win-now or good enough.

I'm also a little sick of hearing everyone say they should have changed the roster around those guys... that is only valid before last season... as I think we were conservative there. We were trying like hell to move guys and very clearly the market said "we won't give you anything good". Bogey, Ingles, and Mike (for the right price) could have been moved... but the returns were subpar. Do we think Ainge was sitting there thumbing his hole and not trying to move those guys. Then Ingles tore his ACL... Mike and Bogey are generally declining in trade value... I think it is very easy for us to say "do something!!!" but there wasn't anything good.

Again, under the DL regime I think we could and should have changed things up... sounded like JZ was trying in the offseason and Quin put the breaks on it.

It was just so clear to me that it was the right time if you wanted to get a premium for the guys you have... waiting a year would provide what?

Trading Donny for real players and a few picks could create some options and potentially a much better fit. If you blow it up every time you have an underachieving year odds are good you will just keep blowing it up. I lived through the Stockton Malone era when lots of folks wanted it blown up and Larry and Jerry stayed the course. I am not convinced this team couldn't have done some retooling and tinkering and gotten better, especially with a new coach and a better locker room. Getting back to two all stars who are not past their prime is a very tall order.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

If you believe that the expression, "trading a car for raffle tickets" implies that picks are worthless....I seriously can't help you. I'd expect a child to understand what that means. I don't even know why this is a discussion point, nobody actually believes that Infection thinks the picks are worthless.

I think he was comparing Donovan to hubcaps, Rudy to a car, and picks to raffle tickets to show the value in comparison with each other. You are hung up on worthless... it is to show what he thinks they are worth... which is raffle tickets... which isn't worth much. I have talked a lot with him here over the years and I would guess he values picks a whole lot less than most posters on this forum. He doesn't think they are worthless but I think its fair to say he thinks their best value is in trades for actual players.

Is it an exaggeration... it is. Is it fair for me to say "hey these picks aren't worthless raffle tickets?"... i think it is. To be accused of straw man arguments and misinterpreting things is pretty wild... especially when you out here saying "many on this board wouldn't trade Bogey for Smart" when there were actually very few people that did.

As far as the Portland trade, it's really pretty easy. Ingles to POR, Bogey/O'Neale/Clarkson/Conley somewhere else for a 1st, that first goes to POR. The Jazz could have traded any of those players for Roco and Powell and improved greatly. The Jazz could have also traded two of those players for Roco and Powell and gotten better. Could they have gotten a first for one of those players? I have a strong feeling because we did trade one of those players for a 1st and that trade could have been easily executed back then. There would have been more incentive for BKN to trade a first last year than when they did this summer. Royce could have easily been looped into the Harden deal which happened within a week of the Powell/Covington deal.

Oh and by the way, this is just one example of something that "did" happen. The reason why I brought this up as an example was a counter to the idea that the Jazz tried so hard to get better but they just couldn't find a deal to improve. I don't think that was the case. Go back to when the trade was made, I promise you I was not the only one thinking this. It's hard for me to believe that we did everything we could, but just couldn't find anything to help us. That's actually why we're talking about Roco/Powell btw. It was about the trade market at the time. There were several players who were in trade rumors all year that could have helped us. Roco/Powell is just the most concrete example of a trade for two players, who were perfect for us, that went for very little. Maybe you think this particular trade was implausible for UTA to execute....are we now convinced we tried really hard to do something but couldn't? Eh....I'm skeptical.

I mean, if we're being realistic about that Powell/Roco trade, the number one reason why we wouldn't do it is because we didn't want to take on a ton of future salary. I could totally see that, and aligns into my theory that Ainge/FO was favoring the "blow it up" option already. I think it's likely we were leaning that direction, and thus we were protecting the future cap situation/picks very closely. It's fine....but it is a damn shame that we could never give Don/Rudy a legitimate shot to win. Those guys were so good and we wasted it with years of inaction.

They simply had their limits... not some master plan to blow it up. They tried to do deals and came up empty. The stuff they offered didn't match what Portland wanted... you can loop in other teams if you want... if there was a good deal that didn't hurt our future or cost a billion dollars in tax they would have done it. They might not view RoCo/Powell as obvious upgrades to Royce and Bogey... at least not obvious enough to invest a pick or the additional money.

 

[KqWIN]

“Worth less” is not the same as “worthless”.

 

[KqWIN]

I think he was comparing Donovan to hubcaps, Rudy to a car, and picks to raffle tickets to show the value in comparison with each other. You are hung up on worthless... it is to show what he thinks they are worth... which is raffle tickets... which isn't worth much. I have talked a lot with him here over the years and I would guess he values picks a whole lot less than most posters on this forum. He doesn't think they are worthless but I think its fair to say he thinks their best value is in trades for actual players.

Is it an exaggeration... it is. Is it fair for me to say "hey these picks aren't worthless raffle tickets?"... i think it is. To be accused of straw man arguments and misinterpreting things is pretty wild... especially when you out here saying "many on this board wouldn't trade Bogey for Smart" when there were actually very few people that did.



They simply had their limits... not some master plan to blow it up. They tried to do deals and came up empty. The stuff they offered didn't match what Portland wanted... you can loop in other teams if you want... if there was a good deal that didn't hurt our future or cost a billion dollars in tax they would have done it. They might not view RoCo/Powell as obvious upgrades to Royce and Bogey... at least not obvious enough to invest a pick or the additional money.

If you know he doesn’t think they are worthless, there is literally no reason to get upset that someone thinks they are worthless. I really don’t think it takes a genius to see the hesitancy of trading a guaranteed star player for a bunch of low chances to get a star. Maybe you think those low chances are worth it, but if you don’t it doesn’t mean those low chances are worthless.

You also don’t need to make up Roco/Powell = championship btw lol. That came out of nowhere. No one says or believes these things and we all know it. It’s ok to have a difference in opinion and you don’t have to make up something from the other side to make your opinion more valid.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

Trading Donny for real players and a few picks could create some options and potentially a much better fit. If you blow it up every time you have an underachieving year odds are good you will just keep blowing it up. I lived through the Stockton Malone era when lots of folks wanted it blown up and Larry and Jerry stayed the course. I am not convinced this team couldn't have done some retooling and tinkering and gotten better, especially with a new coach and a better locker room. Getting back to two all stars who are not past their prime is a very tall order.

I lived through Stockton/Malone too... the CBA would never allow that type of team to form over 15 years... even if you did... the working relationship with those two is so much better than Don and Rudy.

I agree trading Don was a better idea than Don/Rudy going forward now that all the reporting has come out about how toxic it was. it almost certainly would yield the disappointing results we have had the last 3 years (its not just one underachieving year... sorry bud.) Rudy has like 2-3 good AS years left if he's lucky... father time is undefeated. What were we going to accomplish the next two years with Rudy and say RJ Barrett and some rookies?

Also, the last time we truly blew it up and went scorched earth was when? It isn't like this is common.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

If you know he doesn’t think they are worthless, there is literally no reason to get upset that someone thinks they are worthless. I really don’t think it takes a genius to see the hesitancy of trading a guaranteed star player for a bunch of low chances to get a star. Maybe you think those low chances are worth it, but if you don’t it doesn’t mean those low chances are worthless.

You also don’t need to make up Roco/Powell = championship btw lol. That came out of nowhere. No one says or believes these things and we all know it. It’s ok to have a difference in opinion and you don’t have to make up something from the other side to make your opinion more valid.

The lowest value cars sell for like $10kish and we traded that for something that is routinely sold for a dollar or two at school functions. I'm not upset at that... I pointed out how I thought it was a wild miscalculation. Then you come in and are like "ain't no one implying these things are worthless... geez making **** up". Sorry I didn't nail the exact worth here... technically not worthless... but worth about $2.

My simple point is there are plenty on here downplaying the Rudy return as just a few mediocre picks or making it seem like we got a pile of magic beans. When the reality is 90% of the reporting around the trade was "holy **** they got a ton for him" with some "well now teams can't trade their stars for less than what Danny got from Minny".

If Roco/Powell doesn't give the team a better chance at a title then its tough to argue its worth the huge investment it would have been financially. Saving money on the current league year was a large part of that deal... taking on money for us would have been troublesome. I just don't think its as simple as you are making it... I think its okay to say they didn't try everything and were too stagnant in years past... but once Joe went down we were cooked. It shut the tiny little sliver of a championship window we had.

Just because someone sees things differently than you it doesn't make them a child or an idiot.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

Collecting picks doesn't win titles... hitting on picks does... we have stacked the odds that we will hit on enough picks. We will have the extra draft capital to do the finish work we couldn't with this group.

 

[KqWIN]

The lowest value cars sell for like $10kish and we traded that for something that is routinely sold for a dollar or two at school functions. I'm not upset at that... I pointed out how I thought it was a wild miscalculation. Then you come in and are like "ain't no one implying these things are worthless... geez making **** up". Sorry I didn't nail the exact worth here... technically not worthless... but worth about $2.

My simple point is there are plenty on here downplaying the Rudy return as just a few mediocre picks or making it seem like we got a pile of magic beans. When the reality is 90% of the reporting around the trade was "holy **** they got a ton for him" with some "well now teams can't trade their stars for less than what Danny got from Minny".

If Roco/Powell doesn't give the team a better chance at a title then its tough to argue its worth the huge investment it would have been financially. Saving money on the current league year was a large part of that deal... taking on money for us would have been troublesome. I just don't think its as simple as you are making it... I think its okay to say they didn't try everything and were too stagnant in years past... but once Joe went down we were cooked. It shut the tiny little sliver of a championship window we had.

Just because someone sees things differently than you it doesn't make them a child or an idiot.

I’m totally fine with seeing something different, it doesn’t make for good discussion when you make up the other side’s talking points.

I do think you’re an idiot if you though Infection was implying that picks are worthless. It’s as idiotic as saying that picks have some crazy value like an 80% of winning the lotto. No one actually believes these things we all know it, it’s simply arguing in bad faith.

I’m certainly on the side that the haul for Rudy isn’t what the media has hyped it to be. Doesn’t mean I think that it was worthless. I’d even say it was really good trade value return for the Jazz, but there more to this than just winning or losing the trades. Rudy has given the Jazz more success than just about the entire TWolves history as a franchise….and even though it was a lot of picks I can see why it’s worth it then or why it would have been worth it for us to keep Rudy. Certainly not the worst trade in NBA history or whatever Simmons was calling it.

It would have been really hard to get the next step and beyond that with Don/Rudy…but it’s also going to be really tough to get there with what we have now and what we get for Don. The decision to blow it up vs rebuild certainly got more difficult as more time (and terrible moves) went by, but I still would have stuck it out with Don and Rudy and possibly one or the other depending on what else was out there.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

“Worth less” is not the same as “worthless”.

Hard eye roll here... very cute.

Me: Hey kids you are worth less than $2.

Wife: Heard you called the kids worthless!?!?!

Me: What?????? Where'd you get that impression????

 

[KqWIN]

Hard eye roll here... very cute.

Me: Hey kids you are worth less than $2.

Wife: Heard you called the kids worthless!?!?!

Me: What?????? Where'd you get that impression????

1: These picks are worth less than they are made out to be.

2: I can’t believe people are saying picks are worthless!!!!!!