What are you most concerned about with the Jazz for the 25/26 season?

[SoberasHotRod]

We’ve got the sixth worst record come lottery and three teams from behind us, who have no business getting high picks, jump us. One of the teams is the Lakers.

This move takes us from 6th to 36th in the draft. Oh, wait, no. Nevermind. We wouldn’t have the 36th pick (the almost first rounder) because for some reason Ainge included it in the Conley deal that only netted us the phantom Lakers’ pick (how many seconds have we traded away that have or will end up being in the early 30s?).

Our “treasure trove” of assets that included Minnesota pick swap (negated and irrelevant), Cleveland pick swap (negated and irrelevant), our own pick (forfeited), the Lakers pick (now a second rounder because they moved up), and what would’ve been a good second rounder traded away to Minnesota — ironically being a better pick than the second-rounder we included in the deal but now get a mid second round consolation pick from the Lakers for the first-rounder not conveying.

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

The Lakers pick is 2027, but yes, I've imagined Minnesota or Cleveland winning the lottery, but we didn't have a pick to swap. Absolutely the worst case scenario.

 

[fishonjazz]

Having no one to build around is a much bigger problem at this point than winning more games than expected.

Worst would be to win too many games cause Lauri balls out and we get lucky a bunch and not have the young guys pop.
Then we miss out on the supposedly awesome draft next year.

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[fishonjazz]

Can you elaborate? Are there players or situations that you are specifically concerned about?

I would assume it's related to the Ace drama from the draft

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[fishonjazz]

My primary hopes for this season are that 1) Ace do really well, 2) we keep our pick, and 3) that we don't have to do the gross blatant "lose on purpose" thing we did last year to pull it off. 1 and 2 being for some hope for the future, and 1 and 3 being so I actually want to watch the games this year (last year being the first time ever that I chose not to watch any games when I had the chance to). Those I'd say are in priority order.

So I guess my biggest concern from the list would be about young players not doing well, though Ace'd be the only one I'd really worry about. Really want to see Hendricks have a good recovery from the injury and Clayton do well, would love to see Key and Williams make big improvements, but my hopes aren't hanging on them. Frankly I don't really know that I expect anyone outside of Ace to still be on the team when we are good again.

Really I think my biggest concern is about Lauri. If he doesn't return to form and his all star year was a fluke, we're stuck with an albatross contract for a very long time while we are trying to rebuild, which would be catastrophic. If he does, it will be very hard to do both 2 and 3. So the best outcome is maybe that he excels to start the year, rehabbing his trade value, and then we trade him, which kind of sucks to think about your team's best player. So I worry about that because I don't see any possibility around him that I would be happy with.

This is a depressing, yet accurate, post

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[fishonjazz]

I do hope so.

Last year we won 17, while pretty egregiously manipulating lineups and rest days to lose on purpose. If we aren't doing that this year, I don't see how we just win 18. The year prior we won 31 and had the 8th worst record. The year before that we won 37. I think we were projected to the very bottom both of those years as well. I think Lauri's play was a big part of the reason we didn't end up there.

If we are lose-on-purpose tanking again despite what everyone is saying, then fine, I just don't want to watch it happen again.

This year's team is worse than last year's is how.

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