What do you think Smith, Ainge, Wade and Zantacs are thinking right now?

[infection]

This is a live look at Ryan Smith, Danny Ainge, and Quin Snyder.

Warning it has a swear.

 

[jom2003]

It will take years to undue stupid DL's decisions

we will be giving other teams multiple early second rounders, some of which would turn into solid rotation pieces, for the next 7 years as we go through a painful rebuild. oh, have we mention that 2022 first rounder to Memphis is only top 6 protected? if we end up in the play-in and lose, we will be giving Memphis a lotto pick. And that first rounder to OKC is definitely gonna be a lotto pick

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

There is no tangible proof that Donovan is trying to leave. There is no evidence that he is upset.

However, if we get to the summer and he wants gone for whatever reason, we trade him. Until then, you guys should stop speculating on his feelings and being a baby. You should be nicer to our best player.

Lmao, you are better than this man.

 

[Ineptimusprime]

This is a live look at Ryan Smith, Danny Ainge, and Quin Snyder.

Warning it has a swear.

Glad the Jazz bear made it out okay.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

C'mon man. I know you're committed to this train of thinking, but our franchise is not going to trade every single piece OKC style just to be stuck in OKC type purgatory for years and years and years.

We will be fine when we trade Rudy and maybe one or two more with an emphasis on getting younger and more dynamic on both ends of the floor. There will be some lumps, but maybe the guys will enjoy playing together again.

Nah... I'm telling you... we have two stars but they both have flaws.. they aren't fatal flaws but they cause you just enough issues that you need some really unique players around them if you are going to win a title. You need all the surrounding players to be shooters and at least average defenders. You need one that can create and pass. You need one to be an elite perimeter defender. These are the type of players that are VERY difficult to find... and we need a couple.

If you trade Rudy you might find one but you open up another huge hole on both sides of the ball. So you need to address that in a different way. You have a 1 year window to make these improvements and then you can talk to Donovan about an extension... if he won't extend his deal then what? Well you just spent a year waiting this thing out... you don't have a 2024 pick so tanking is dangerous... do you risk Donovan losing basically all of his trade value if he doesn't like where it is headed? You also are a little limited in what you can do because you may have great basketball deals that would piss off Donovan... so you end up making similar mistakes like the Lakers and Cavs have in the past to appease Lebron. Only problem is Donovan isn't as good as Lebron.

OKC's purgatory? Sir, they have been out of the playoffs for 2 years and are setup for huge success. We will see how lucky they get in the lottery but at worst they will spend one more year out of the playoffs and will have SGA, Giddey, Dort, and two other high level draft guys plus infinity picks to fill in around them through trade. You need a little lotto luck but you could end up being the next Boston, Memphis, Phoenix, by nailing a couple drafts in a row. Or maybe you become the next San Antonio and get the Tim Duncan type guy a team needs to have amazing success.

The team has avoided a prolonged tank and duct taped things together... pull the plug now and you stack the odds in your favor of having success... there are no guarantees of course and every route likely leads to failure. Its the best of a bunch of bad choices.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

OKC has at least 3 firsts every draft from now until 2026... many have low protections or unique swap rights that will make them juicy. If they get a top 4 pick this year they are pretty well setup... 2 years out of the playoffs... thats it.

 

[KqWIN]

OKC is in a decent position, but simply being bad and having draft picks is not a power position. OKC is in a good position because Presti is a good GM, but tanking does equal success and tanking certainly isn't a requirement for success either. The idea of tanking is nice because you're in a perpetual state of hope without any real expectations. Winning is good, but losing is also good. You're happy no matter what happens....which is fine. But tanking as this holy grail and necessary component was never really a thing. The comfort of being a team with no expectations combined with the excitement of watching young players grow has made people overvalue tanking when it comes to the actual value added towards a championship.

The Jazz avoided a prolonged tank and duct taped things together? No shot. The Jazz had the pieces you tank for, but failed to assemble the right pieces around them. The list of failures and missteps, some obvious and some not, is very long but avoiding tanking is not one of them. Even with all the failures, this team was the title favorite at one point during the playoffs and honestly it was deserved. Rudy and Don are really special. The only way you break that up is by necessity, not because you have to tank.

 

[KqWIN]

The Jazz had a good run, but we're in a tough spot because we didn't act quick enough. Maybe that's not the right way to put it. It's more like they wasted their last golden opportunity because they didn't act. Some FO mistakes are forgivable. A lot of people complain about not hitting on low probability resources like late first and late second round picks etc. That stuff doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the complete disregard for obvious issues. I don't think there's a "contending" team with more blatant issues than this Jazz team. To be fair, others may not have seen it as so obvious. Don't know how many times I was told we can't trade for Marcus Smart, Josh Hart, Covington etc not because we didn't have the trade package, but because we couldn't afford lose the supporting players we had.

We had a historical playoff defense failure against DEN, our solution was to throw Miye Oni at it. We had another one against the Clippers, our solution was to throw Rudy Gay at it. Idk, from my point of view it's pretty comical how bad that lack of recognition is. Did they not see it as a problem, or was that just the best they could do?

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

OKC is in a decent position, but simply being bad and having draft picks is not a power position. OKC is in a good position because Presti is a good GM, but tanking does equal success and tanking certainly isn't a requirement for success either. The idea of tanking is nice because you're in a perpetual state of hope without any real expectations. Winning is good, but losing is also good. You're happy no matter what happens....which is fine. But tanking as this holy grail and necessary component was never really a thing. The comfort of being a team with no expectations combined with the excitement of watching young players grow has made people overvalue tanking when it comes to the actual value added towards a championship.

The Jazz avoided a prolonged tank and duct taped things together? No shot. The Jazz had the pieces you tank for, but failed to assemble the right pieces around them. The list of failures and missteps, some obvious and some not, is very long but avoiding tanking is not one of them. Even with all the failures, this team was the title favorite at one point during the playoffs and honestly it was deserved. Rudy and Don are really special. The only way you break that up is by necessity, not because you have to tank.

I agree somewhat.... by duct taped together I mean they avoided a prolonged tank... when Hayward left we were at a pivot point and Donovan hit big time. If not we would have been a high 30s low 40s win team for a while. Rudy and Donovan's timelines lined up enough to make it work. Those are the type of pieces you tank to get... I agree, but when you have those pieces AND you have a ton of assets/cap space. We didn't capitalize on the fringe stuff we needed to to truly vault this team to an elite tier for the long term. Using those assets on a guy that doesn't line up along the same timeline as Donovan and Rudy meant that our biggest chance to win a title was right now. It is clear this is no longer a title team.

To your last point. You only break it up if you have to... well it feels very much like we have to since those guys don't like each other and there is enough bad experience to believe it is truly now unsalvageable. All the spare parts that were critical to us are either gone or fading quick (Mike had a scary rough stretch and is long in the tooth). My whole argument boils down to this... you either keep both of them or trade them both. Both guys decide they want to figure it the hell out then do what you can to reconfigure and get a new coach. Still gonna be tough to do with salary constraints, no draft picks, and a star that might have eyes for a different market.

Active tanking is not a necessary component to become a contender but high level players are... and high level players are found mostly at the top of the draft... so you have to get a few high picks or beat the biggest of odds and land the next Jokic, Giannis, Rudy, Donovan outside of the top 10.

 

[KqWIN]

I agree somewhat.... by duct taped together I mean they avoided a prolonged tank... when Hayward left we were at a pivot point and Donovan hit big time. If not we would have been a high 30s low 40s win team for a while. Rudy and Donovan's timelines lined up enough to make it work. Those are the type of pieces you tank to get... I agree, but when you have those pieces AND you have a ton of assets/cap space. We didn't capitalize on the fringe stuff we needed to to truly vault this team to an elite tier for the long term. Using those assets on a guy that doesn't line up along the same timeline as Donovan and Rudy meant that our biggest chance to win a title was right now. It is clear this is no longer a title team.

To your last point. You only break it up if you have to... well it feels very much like we have to since those guys don't like each other and there is enough bad experience to believe it is truly now unsalvageable. All the spare parts that were critical to us are either gone or fading quick (Mike had a scary rough stretch and is long in the tooth). My whole argument boils down to this... you either keep both of them or trade them both. Both guys decide they want to figure it the hell out then do what you can to reconfigure and get a new coach. Still gonna be tough to do with salary constraints, no draft picks, and a star that might have eyes for a different market.

Active tanking is not a necessary component to become a contender but high level players are... and high level players are found mostly at the top of the draft... so you have to get a few high picks or beat the biggest of odds and land the next Jokic, Giannis, Rudy, Donovan outside of the top 10.

When Hayward left, we weren't left with many options. I wouldn't say that team was duct taped together, that team was just really good because Gobert and Don were great. That's not duct tape. You didn't know Don was going to be so good as a rookie, but the only way you're not getting into the 35-45 win range is you sit Rudy down. I don't necessarily think it would have been a good idea to "SGA" Gobert and/or Mitchell and sit them so could lose on purpose and I don't think it was incorrect of them to sign some vets like Jerebko and Thabo. The Jazz avoided a tank, but it's not a bad thing because they did so by having the players you tank for.

One might have said that you must trade Rudy because Hayward left, but if you did that you would have missed out on a huge opportunity to win a championship. I would put these last 3 years as the greatest opportunity this franchise has had to win a title despite their failures on the court and in the FO. The duo is going to be breaking up, no doubt about that and also no doubt that the franchise will pick Don. I think both will have to be traded at some point, but I wouldn't say that we need tank right now because of that. I've said this many times....I don't have any delusions about Mitchell signing another contract here. The possibility of him doing so is so low, it's not something I would even be factoring into my future plans. Having said that, refactoring a bit around Don for a year or two isn't the end of the world. I do think you hold onto a star as long as he wants to be here. Just be prepared to perform a Paul George trade instead of rolling the dice with a Hayward type exit.

You can build value in other ways instead besides trading all your good players for draft picks. I would have loved to have seen the FO already start that process. 1) because of the obvious flaws that existed with this team and 2) we have a great environment to build players up. If we went out and got Smart, Hart, Covington, etc. I'm confident this team would be doing much better, they'd be more interesting watch, and we probably would have gotten another year out of Rudy+Don. We'll never truly know what their relationship is like, but one thing I know for sure is that it's fine when they're winning and it's not fine when they're losing. The defensive/toughness element that we're desperately missing would have gone a long way with this team.

 

[outerspacefan]

OKC timely traded star players.
Jazz made sure they don't have such a path.
It happens.
It's just that a our long standing series of mistakes are extremely expensive and hard to overcome in the NBA.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

When Hayward left, we weren't left with many options. I wouldn't say that team was duct taped together, that team was just really good because Gobert and Don were great. That's not duct tape. You didn't know Don was going to be so good as a rookie, but the only way you're not getting into the 35-45 win range is you sit Rudy down. I don't necessarily think it would have been a good idea to "SGA" Gobert and/or Mitchell and sit them so could lose on purpose and I don't think it was incorrect of them to sign some vets like Jerebko and Thabo. The Jazz avoided a tank, but it's not a bad thing because they did so by having the players you tank for.

One might have said that you must trade Rudy because Hayward left, but if you did that you would have missed out on a huge opportunity to win a championship. I would put these last 3 years as the greatest opportunity this franchise has had to win a title despite their failures on the court and in the FO. The duo is going to be breaking up, no doubt about that and also no doubt that the franchise will pick Don. I think both will have to be traded at some point, but I wouldn't say that we need tank right now because of that. I've said this many times....I don't have any delusions about Mitchell signing another contract here. The possibility of him doing so is so low, it's not something I would even be factoring into my future plans. Having said that, refactoring a bit around Don for a year or two isn't the end of the world. I do think you hold onto a star as long as he wants to be here. Just be prepared to perform a Paul George trade instead of rolling the dice with a Hayward type exit.

You can build value in other ways instead besides trading all your good players for draft picks. I would have loved to have seen the FO already start that process. 1) because of the obvious flaws that existed with this team and 2) we have a great environment to build players up. If we went out and got Smart, Hart, Covington, etc. I'm confident this team would be doing much better, they'd be more interesting watch, and we probably would have gotten another year out of Rudy+Don. We'll never truly know what their relationship is like, but one thing I know for sure is that it's fine when they're winning and it's not fine when they're losing. The defensive/toughness element that we're desperately missing would have gone a long way with this team.

Call it what you'd like... duct tape or we lucked into a nice bridge from Hayward + Rudy to Rudy + Donovan. If Donovan was more like Avery Bradley as was his draft comp... then you are a 35-40 win team until you decide to get off the treadmill and rebuild. We were lucky there was no drop off. I didn't think we needed to trade Rudy immediately but it was on the table the next year or two if we didn't recover.

We don't have to tank right now... it is not required. Retooling around Donovan isn't the worst idea ever... it might be an enjoyable couple years... or it might be miserable hearing the constant rumors about how he is out of here... and it might drag his value down... and instead of trading Conley, Bogey, Royce for assets with long term value we try to get other pieces that are different but have flaws. I am aware we can trade guys but moving Bogey for Kyle Anderson now ain't gonna change things. If there is some draft capital in the Rudy trade that is going to be what ends up determining if we can get back to being a contender with Donovan. Your re-tool might look like the Al Jefferson D Will squad that was painful to watch. How good is that re-tool going to be with: no great up and coming prospects, no draft picks, and no salary flexibility... and honestly outside of making Donovan happy the second part of the offseason plan will be to save money.

While not all teams tank to the top... most of the contenders got 1 or more of their key pieces by being bad and getting a high pick. Delaying a full rebuild has a real cost... and the upside is what? A couple years of 45 win basketball around Donovan and then we take it on the chin to rebuild? That is likely what we end up doing but I see it as less desirable than a full blow up.

And it does really depend on the offers... I think the offers for Donovan could be pretty bonkers... if you don't care about getting good players back the return on Mike/Bogey could be quite good.