Lauri Markkanen Trade Market, Jazz Make Another Mistake? Plus More Surgery For Mavs

Lauri Markkanen Trade Market, Jazz Make Another Mistake? Plus More Surgery For Mavs

Yet another player undergoing surgery for the Dallas Mavericks. This time it’s key big man Derek Lively. What that’s going to mean for the start of the season in Dallas. But first, an update on the trade market for Lowry Marketing and where I think the Jazz are going wrong. I’m Trevor Lane. This is the Basketball Bulletin. Make sure you subscribe right here to the channel. Turn on those notifications as well. All right, the Lowry Market and trade front. Let’s get into it. Uh Markin, fantastic player, but I think Utah may have once again misplayed their hand and it’s putting them in a tough situation. Uh this is from Tim McMahon of ESPN. Utah continues to project marketin as a key part of their future core after signing him to a 5-year $238 million renegotiate and extend during the 2024 off season. The Jazz did listen to trade offers for marketing before they finalized an extension. Remember, some of those offers were reportedly getting pretty high. they would have gotten a haul from Mark particularly from the Golden State Warriors who really really wanted him. But ultimately the Jazz held such a high asking price that they couldn’t get a deal done. And this is nothing new for Utah. And I think it’s to their detriment. They’ve set such a high asking price. Look, there’s there’s something for not selling low on guys, but the Jazz have gone so far the other way, setting an insanely high asking price to where it’s it’s telling teams that you are not interested in making trades. We’ve seen it with Walker Kesler. Now we’re seeing it with Lowry Markin and I think it’s actually hurting the roster construction of the Utah Jazz right now. Uh McMahon goes on to say with the Jazz requiring a massive trade package uh for marketing after he had a disappointing season, it’s unlikely any team would be interested in meeting their asking price. So think about this. The Jazz could have gotten a haul last season, last summer for marketing. He just put up a season where he averaged 19 points and six rebounds. Look, not bad. That’s not bad, but it’s not the season that Markin had the year before when he really broke out. Uh well, two two years before in Utah, he really broke out. He had 25 almost 26 points per game plus eight rebounds. The season before 23. Now it’s down to 19 points. The shooting percentage plummeted from 48% to 42%. And here’s the problem. The three-point percentage dropped significantly. now below league average 34% 35% if we round up everything about Mark and its game significantly dropped off last season. And here’s where that’s particularly problematic is the contract. The Jazz paid him as though he was going to continue to produce. They have to be kicking themselves right now that they didn’t just trade him because right now they’re setting a high asking price for him. But who’s gonna pay this? I mean, you could make the argument that he’s a negative value contract right now. $46.3 million this season, 46 million the next season, 49 million, then 53 million. I think the problem is this. Now, Markin is going to fall into that dreaded third guy category where under the current collective bargaining agreement, you just can’t pay the third best player on a good team first or second best player money. You can’t give that guy max level money. And that’s essentially where we’re at with market. And he’s just being paid too much to be the third best player on a good team. and the way he played last season, that’s what he is. He’s being paid like a first or second best player. Now, maybe he bounces back and that solves the problem for the Utah Jazz. But right now, teams are going to look at him and it’s going to be the same reason why the Pelicans didn’t want to pay Brandon Ingram. You can’t pay that kind of money under this collective bargain agreement to a player who is best served as a third best player on a good team. And unfortunately, that’s where I think Lowry Markin is sitting right now. again. Maybe he bounces back next season and that changes and we we say maybe he can be the second best player on a team and that would certainly change the dynamic. But for the time being, the Jazz may very well have overplayed their hand. And that’s nothing new for them. Look at what they’ve done this summer. For some time, we’ve known that they would probably move on from John Collins, from Jordan Clarkson, and from Colin Ston. And what did they net from those guys? Well, essentially nothing. Jordan Clarkson, they bought out and he walked away because they weren’t able to trade him prior to this while he still had some value. You look at John Collins, what did they get? Well, they turned John Collins into who was an expiring contract into two worse expiring contracts. Two players who are lesser players than John Collins in Kevin Love and Kyle Anderson. And what did they get for their trouble? One second round pick. Now, they did save some money in the net over on that deal as well, but you got one second round pick out of that. Then you used a second round pick in the Colin Ston trade. You turned Colin Ston into an older, worse, more expensive player in Ysef Nerkich and it cost you a second to do it. So Colin Ston, Jordan Clarkson, John Collins, all three of them put together, what was your net in terms of draft capital? Zero. Nothing. You got nothing back in terms of draft capital for those three players. Once again, the Jazz, they continue to set very high prices for their players and then they pay the price for it. Look, there’s something to be said for not selling low on players. There’s no question. You don’t want to be the team that’s constantly selling low. You want to be the team that’s driving a hard bargain because otherwise teams will constantly think they can fleece you in trades. They will constantly send you low ball deals once they see you taking below market value offers. But there’s another way you can go with this, too. you can go too far the other direction where you set prices that are so high that you wind up never being able to make the move when you need to and then you wind up putting yourself in a worse situation. I think that’s unfortunately exactly what’s happened here with the Utah Jazz. And now they’re one of the few teams in the West that we could say probably doesn’t have a shot at the playoffs. Now some of this is of course some bad luck given what happened to them in the draft lottery. Now some would say maybe that’s karma for the way that they tanked the end of last season but they dropped back far in the in the draft lottery. They wound up getting Ace Bailey who’s still a very good player. They were dreaming of Cooper Flag. But clearly this Lowry market and trade front is another situation where we’re looking at it and saying, “Man, the Jazz really should have just pulled the trigger a year ago rather than waited and pushed and pushed and pushed for more than teams were comfortable in giving. And now I think they are paying the price for it.” All right, let’s jump to a little bit more news coming out of Dallas. Mark Stein announcing that Derek Lively underwent a procedure on his right foot. It was to remove bone spurs and he was put in a walking boot. So that means three key Mavs, three Mavs starters have now had surgery. Kyrie Irving for his knee, the ACL, Anthony Davis for his eye, the retina problem, and now Derek Lively as well. And of course, we know Dallas had their season upended last year when Anthony Davis was hurt in his first game as a Dallas Maverick. Kyrie Irving with the ACL tear, they were just absolutely crushed by injuries to a point where there were some games last season where we weren’t sure if the Mavs were going to have the minimum players required by the NBA in order to play in a game. That’s how devastated by injuries the Mavs were. So, this is not good news. However, the silver lining is that right now they believe the Mavs believe that Lively will be back in time for training camp in late September. But still, what you’re losing here with Derrick Lively is an off season of workouts and an off season of progress. Will he be fully in shape at the end of September? Will he be fully in shape to start the season? What that’s going to look like? Remember beginning, it is better obviously to have surgery during the offseason than it is during the season because then you’re not missing games. But you do miss out on that summer of growth, that summer of development, the work that you can put in. Derrick Lively then misses out on, which is particularly important when we’re talking about younger players that they get the opportunity to get out there on the floor. It’s part of the reason why Zack Ed’s injury uh is so devastating to the Memphis Grizzlies. It’s not just that he’s probably going to miss part of the beginning of the season. It’s also that he misses a summer of development and growth, practice, working on all the different skills that he needs to work on over the summer to get ready for the next NBA season. So, this can be a bit of a setback as well for Derrick Lively. And once again, for a Mavs team that has already dealt with so much on the injury front. Certainly got not good news. And we hope that Derrick Lively can get back, get healthy, and be ready to roll for next season for the Dallas Mavericks who legitimately on paper have a team that could be a real threat in the Western Conference, particularly once Kyrie Irving comes back. I like what they did this off seasonason by getting D’Angelo Russell to fill in for the time being while waiting for Kyrie. Hopefully he can come back in January, maybe February, something like that. Maybe it’s the All-Star break that we see Kyrie Irving back in action for the Mavs and then I think they can be a real threat in the West. Certainly the addition of Cooper Flag did not hurt. I think he’s going to be a real good one, but still that’s three key players undergoing surgery this summer for the Dallas Mavericks. Certainly not an ideal situation. Everybody, let me know your thoughts in the comments down below. Are the Jazz making mistakes with their trade chips by asking for too much? and your thoughts on the Derek Lively situation as well. Don’t forget to subscribe right here to the channel. Till next time, see you and stay safe.

In this video Trevor Lane takes a look at the trade market for Lauri Markkanen and why the Jazz may have misplayed their hand, plus another injury hits the Mavs…

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