Question of the Day: What is the Jazz’s Biggest Mistake over the Past 5 Years?
Nobody brings you better coverage of the teams you’re passionate about than these guys. Try some more. This is DJ and PK, presented by Black Desert Resort, Utah’s premier golf resort on 975, the KSL sports song. DJPK. It’s 975, the zone. It is time for the question of the day. ESPN coming up with one of those summertime lists. We love roster mistakes for all 30 NBA teams since 2020. Who made the worst decisions? The cool thing about this is it does show that no matter how good you are, you’re going to miss on players. And if you don’t like to hear that, then you better go get in another line of work because in this line of work, you are going to miss. Because as they went through, even winning teams, teams that, you know, are well-run, teams that have proven it on the floor, big regular season win totals, deep playoff runs, the last two, last couple of champions, massive mistakes, just horrific mistakes. The kind of thing that if you look at just in a bubble, you’d say there must be accountability. Heads must roll. We got to let these people go. They You have got to be accountable for these terrible decisions. If you did that, you just fire everybody in the league. It’s ridiculous. It’s way over the top. Although, it felt good to yell and slam my hand on the table. Accountability. You just seem like such a tough guy. Give you a couple here. They rank him one through 30. And you know, the Celtics, they’ve had an awesome run, right? I mean, they’re in the conference finals more often than not. Uh they’ve won an NBA title and they were ranked 22nd, right? So they’re down in the bottom third. As mistakes go, these aren’t very big, but I tell you the mistake, it’s home because it kind of doubles down on the mistake here. Their biggest mistake, oh, they had to move a young player and it helped them shed and his cancer and his freedom salary. Nobody expected the number 30 pick to develop into the sort of player who’d one day command four first round picks. But that’s what happened with Desmond Bane. How would that work for the Celtics now if they had Desmond Bane? Athletic doesn’t seem to mind to get his hands dirty on the defensive end of the floor. He’ll get in there and battle and then he’ll go down and shoot over 40% from the three-point line. Plenty of Jazz fans wish he’d been drafted when they had a chance, but they went with big seven foot center instead. Went total different direction with Agabuk. But hey, Boston had him and traded him away. Oops. Nonetheless, super well-run front office. Tons of winning and a championship. And then they get into uh the Thunder, the reigning champs. Even the best general managers lose trades, such as the case with Sam Prey, a master architect of a championship roster, potential dynasty, but an airprone trader nonetheless. He makes a lot of deals and he traded away Emanuel Quickley, uh, Jaden McDaniels, um, traded Miles McBride and traded Alpron Sangun to the Houston Rockets. That’s the big mess. Sen’s been really good. I mean, he’s really, he has really done it for Houston. He has gotten in there just when they play the Jazz, marvel at him. I mean, I’m not watching a lot of Rocket Basketball because I’m watching the local teams starting with the Jazz, but the hockey and the college hoops, too. But, man, when you watch him, when you do watch him, watch him in the playoffs. And he’s got stuff to learn. He’s still he’s not a finished product. I think I think he just needs to play more playoff games. I think it’ll translate and they’ll end up with some decent runs here in the playoffs. But, man, trading him away, how would he have fit in in Oklahoma City? Awesome. So, he traded away an all-star center and all defensive wing and two quality guards. Oops. But he also traded for the MVP and hit on other guys as well, drafting Chad Homegr and Jaylen Williams on the same night. That’s a win. It’s a win. They got a championship. They ranked them 23rd, kind of the fourth tier. The Jazz 26th. The Jazz emerged relatively unscathed on this list. 26. That’s actually top five because they were putting the biggest ones at number one. Have you figured out what number one is yet? Have you figured out? I actually missed when I guessed on this, Christian. Worst moves. Yeah, the worst move. What front office you the, you know, bad front office? You 26, you’re in pretty good shape. Uh, they they basically right, they’ve held on to guys too long. They they misguided the market on the veterans and market is still here. two years ago at an all-star level, his trade value is much higher. He hadn’t gotten the contract at that point. Now, he’s not playing as well, and he his contract makes him more expensive. So, it’s uh it’s much more difficult to find value for him now than it would have been two years ago. So, worst move is it involving Kevin Durant. See, that’s where I went. I went to the Suns. I would have went Suns or Nets. And you would Well, the Nets were fourth and they they had their biggest mistake trading for James Harden. Okay. I think all of that was just a train wreck. The Suns trading for Durant and Bradley Beal breaking up. They The Suns broke up so much. I mean, they were literally in the NBA finals. Just bring them back. Let him They’ve got that lesson now. Let’s go. Let’s see what they got. But no, started just couldn’t couldn’t sit still. Had to had to start fiddling around. Yeah. I thought it would be the Suns. And then when I saw who was number one, I realized, well, of course, the Dallas Mavericks were trading Luca Donsuch. They gave them the worst. The Suns were second. Dallas, those teams literally in the NBA finals and they had to fiddle around. Uh the Bucks trading for Lillard because that just that didn’t go anywhere. They didn’t even win a playoff series and and it’s over now. They bought him out and he’s back in Portland and and so you you hand over all that and then what’d you get? nothing. Uh, the other one in the top five was Sacramento because they traded Tyrese Hallebertton. They had they had Hallebertton and Darren Fox and lost them both in three years. They were in third place in the West. It looked like they were building something, but kept fiddling and Oops. So, there you go. Now, as far as your reaction to this, I I put it up on our Facebook page. Um, and Matt, I take no stock in what ESPN says. Okay. Brian, the biggest mistake they made is not playing marketing. There are plenty of you who are just not in on the tanking of games. Go out and win. Now, they could have had the fifth worst record and you know, sixth worst record and slide to n or 10 or something. All of a sudden, you’re handing over and you don’t A, you don’t draft Bailey. B, you don’t draft anyone with that pick because you don’t have it anymore. And the rebuild is stalled. Vernon, yeah, they’re wasting his maximum trade value and they’re not playing him by benching him while tanking. not maximize his talent while he’s in his prime. They should have traded him last year. Yep. I get your argument. Yep. But on the heels of trading Donovan and Rudy and then flipping Lowry again, get why that was a hard call to make. And also at that point they had enough veterans and I think they still thought they might get a hit in big game hunting but like the whole trade market is pretty much seized up. Certainly for the guys they were looking at in their 20s. You can go out and acquire guys who are at the end of their career and have injuries and dubious contracts. Terrell play the man. Help the young guys see what winning is like. Angels tanking backfired. Hopefully Junior realizes last season was a mistake and they try to win with the current roster sort of. I mean they’re going to try to win but realistically it is so young. How much winning do you think they’ll do? I think they’ll I think they’ll do more than they did last year. I think that there are a lot of scheduled games and also teams will hand you a lot of games sitting guys, guys who either have injuries or they think they need rest and so you’re not I mean you you can sit here right now and say well they can’t beat that team, they can’t beat that team. Yeah, but you’re talking about the best players on whatever team and we see plenty of nights the best players don’t play. So you will catch some breaks and be able to beat some people. The Jazz are that team. The teams are scheduling saying, “Okay, those can be that can be a rest night. Kawhai, James, Bradley, you’re sitting. So, I expect they’ll win more. I don’t think they’re going to win a lot more. I don’t think they’re going to go out there and win 40 games. It’s not the way this roster is built. But are they going to be in the 20s, in the low to mid 20s? That doesn’t seem like a stretch to me at all. Which is still a lot of losing. Uh 60 losses, that’s quite a bit of losing. And that that could be in play. But if they end up with 50 or 55 losses, that wouldn’t be uh that wouldn’t be shocking. Johnny’s dance party. I completely agree. I can’t believe a didn’t move him before the $40 million contract. Not to mention he signed him later so he cannot be traded for another year. A should have told the finisher he’s going to sit on the bench during the tank and should have done that trade. He could have had a boatload of draft picks. Yeah, boatload. Does it seem like that kind of thing is slowing down? I mean, how many times you get to do that? And how many draft picks do you want? I guess they could take some in even numbered years and that would help. They’ve already pushed one of them out with that deal with the Suns, which looks like a good idea. Eric, the biggest mistake was not tanging hard enough at the start of the rebuild. That’s the bigger point, Eric. And you’re right. I I would totally agree with that. Markin is the um he’s the star on top of the Christmas tree, right? That’s the biggest piece of the puzzle they could have flipped and but the same principle holds for other players and certainly for Jordan Clarkson. He’d be the second name, you know, but Colin Ston, John Collins was a different deal because they didn’t they had to get him and then they had to rebuild him. So, I kind of feel like they were on time moving him. He needed to have a good year to increase his value to move him. Unfortunately, when he had that good year and increased his value, the timing was just all wrong. Well, and it’s hard because with Lowry, he came here and kind of surprised everybody. And that’s when the All-Star game was here in Salt Lake City. I know, but don’t get all caught up emotionally in the All-Star game and having a player in the All-Star game. But it shows, see, the rebuild’s progressing. This is a future piece, but he’s not the future piece because you’re not going to be able to make all these trades. And I think they just thought they would be able to get some more young talent in. skip steps to borrow something from from the previous administration. Skip steps as Dennis Lindsay would say and they haven’t been able to do that. There will be no skipping of steps. They will draft 19-year-olds and then progress accordingly. All right, DJ PK. Uh got another uh man, it’s you can tell it’s July because the lists are just flying. But this goes to college football in the state of Utah. How good are the Cougars going to be without Rhettzlaf? How good are the youths going to be now? They got a new offensive coordinator and quarterback coming in as a tandem from New Mexico. And how good are the Aggies going to be with Bryson Barnes calling the shots? And got a little uh got a little negativity on social media. I know you’re astounded that just astonishing. Why is the local media like this? And it it’s funny. It wasn’t an hour later I saw, wow, the national media is like this, too. Ranking them. And one guy’s getting a lot more hyped than the other two. We’ll get to that next.
Question of the Day: ESPN Says the Jazz’s biggest mistake over the past 5 years is not trading Lauir Markkanen sooner. What do you think?
