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Vet minimum Options

Yep, agreed. There aren't minutes to be had. There is (was) no one available out there that would be taking minutes from Mitchell, Ingles, Royce, Clarkson, or Bojan. They all serve key roles on what we have going.

It all comes down to Conley. Jazz seem to have decided that there's no one worth getting over Conley (combined with his coming off the books next year). Many of the loudest voices on here disagree. Guess we'll see how it turns out.

If it turns out Conley isn't the fit this year, I think the cleanest possible swap is for Otto Porter. But I understand, given the injury history, why the Jazz aren't inclined to press on that one. Who knows whether the Bulls are interested either. Maybe possibly a bit more so with Patrick Williams? Could be a trade deadline issue again?

Porter - Conley swap would be perfect for us. We could use the BAE on a PG and still be under the tax.

I've always been a Porter guy. Yes, the injury and salary concerns are valid...but they also exist with Conley. Porter is Robert Covington who can actually shoot it well.
 
Porter - Conley swap would be perfect for us. We could use the BAE on a PG and still be under the tax.

I've always been a Porter guy. Yes, the injury and salary concerns are valid...but they also exist with Conley. Porter is Robert Covington who can actually shoot it well.
I'd say the injury concerns are a good deal more significant with OPJ than Conley.
 
I'd say the injury concerns are a good deal more significant with OPJ than Conley.
Maybe, no one can really predict the future here. It is a 27 year old vs a 33 year old.

Either way, I think the potential reward of Porter panning out is much greater than Conley. Even if Conley is available and healthy, I don't love him with Mitchell in the back court and I also don't love that it freezes Joe Ingles out of the game. Porter is a really great complimentary player. There's a reason why he's a +/- god.
 
Porter - Conley swap would be perfect for us. We could use the BAE on a PG and still be under the tax.

I've always been a Porter guy. Yes, the injury and salary concerns are valid...but they also exist with Conley. Porter is Robert Covington who can actually shoot it well.
could we do a deal with the Porter-Conley and add Harrison?
 
Let me backup and say that it wouldn’t appear like it’s an obvious upgrade, but really would be. The fact that it wouldn’t appear that way is reason enough that DL doesn’t do it.

But let me give some better context:

For those who have been following this franchise, we really haven’t ever had a really good defensive wing, and it’s distorted our views. Even dating back to the DWill era, some thought Brewer was a defender, but he was pretty bad. I even said Korver was our best wing defender. You could count Matthews, but we had him one year as a rookie. I won’t get in to AK because that’s a huge can of worms. Even with our finals runs our “specialist” was Bryon Russel, whose defense was very overrated. It’s allowed us to create the illusion that guys like Roger Braille were defensive stoppers.

I would then couple this with our franchise’s history of clinging to guys because both sentimentality plus thinking we got value. You know those people who buy something they don’t want or need simply because they perceive they got it at a really good value? That’s kind of how we are. Jarron Collins comes to mind. The fact that Royce is one of DL’s cubic zirconias in the rough makes us value him more because of how much of a value he appears to be. Since we’ve never had really good wing defenders, we get to see the whole body of work on Royce and feel he must fit that. I think if we had a few seasons of footage on Torrey Craig, maybe we’d feel the same way. So even a guy like him or, better, a Shaq Harrison. But I don’t think our collective pride would allow us to believe that we could replace our $10M guy with a minimum signing and be better off.
 
It doesn’t matter if they interest you. It matters if they interest DL. And DL thinks Shaq has been away from the game too long and is too out of shape, and he’s pretty sure Iwundu died in the prequels.
It’s more likely we get CJ miles back since his number is in the Rolodex... DL was furious that the lakers got Matthews cuz his number was there too... he was shocked at how quickly the Lakers got that signing done.
 
Let me backup and say that it wouldn’t appear like it’s an obvious upgrade, but really would be. The fact that it wouldn’t appear that way is reason enough that DL doesn’t do it.

But let me give some better context:

For those who have been following this franchise, we really haven’t ever had a really good defensive wing, and it’s distorted our views. Even dating back to the DWill era, some thought Brewer was a defender, but he was pretty bad. I even said Korver was our best wing defender. You could count Matthews, but we had him one year as a rookie. I won’t get in to AK because that’s a huge can of worms. Even with our finals runs our “specialist” was Bryon Russel, whose defense was very overrated. It’s allowed us to create the illusion that guys like Roger Braille were defensive stoppers.

I would then couple this with our franchise’s history of clinging to guys because both sentimentality plus thinking we got value. You know those people who buy something they don’t want or need simply because they perceive they got it at a really good value? That’s kind of how we are. Jarron Collins comes to mind. The fact that Royce is one of DL’s cubic zirconias in the rough makes us value him more because of how much of a value he appears to be. Since we’ve never had really good wing defenders, we get to see the whole body of work on Royce and feel he must fit that. I think if we had a few seasons of footage on Torrey Craig, maybe we’d feel the same way. So even a guy like him or, better, a Shaq Harrison. But I don’t think our collective pride would allow us to believe that we could replace our $10M guy with a minimum signing and be better off.
I see your reasoning. Not sure I fully buy it. I tend to think Royce is the better overall player than either. At this point, the Jazz need more players who give something on both sides of the ball (which I think Royce is better at--you may disagree). Loading up on specialists (which I think most all the realistic names on the board are) isn't going to improve the Jazz.
 
Jazz are in a hard spot (to be fair, most teams in the league are -- though the Jazz might have it worse, since they're likely not high on the list for prospective FAs). This is that addressing one problem likely makes the team vulnerable to another.

Conley addressed the need for off-the dribble creation that the Rockets so painfully exposed. Jettisoning him makes us vulnerable to that again. Though the Rockets don't exist in their same form, there are likely teams around the league that could throw a switching defense at the Jazz in playoff matchups. But with Conley, we're still good here.

At the same time, the Lakers and Nuggets have shown us that the Jazz need to have bigs (and preferably depth there). We addressed that this week.

But there's still one mole we can't whack very well: the (esp. big) wing-heavy teams (Clips and maybe one or two other teams). Problem is that addressing this problem will likely cause another mole to pop up.

We have that problem because we don't have enough players who can whack enough moles simultaneously or are transcendent enough (Steph, Harden) for it not to matter. There's just not a lot of players like this out there, and they tend not to have the Jazz high on their list of preferred spots. So, like most teams in the league, we try to cover up weaknesses with specialists. But specialists can be exposed. And you don't really feel comfortable if you have to rely on specialists for more than 15 minutes a game.
 
Batum!!! Get Goberts buddy. Waived by hornets to make room for Hayward. Batum on a vet minimum deal would bring defense and shooting.
Does Batum bring anything right now? (Honest question, didn't pay attention to Hornets, though the little I've heard makes me think he's washed.)
 
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