Tony Jones with an interview today and a lot of info regarding the Jazz upcoming plans.
https://x.com/Dunzod/status/1818039225348202958
Sounds like tank with Lauri is probably on, which isn't my first choice (still is pretty directionless and trying too hard to have the best of both worlds for my liking). Undeniably a better choice than trading for BI to be a fringe play-in team and ruin our draft pick only for BI to not extend with us, or worse, to sign a $200+M contract with us though…
by Available_Remove242
11 Comments
This is my favorite part of the excerpt:
“The likely scenario is Lauri signs on Aug 7th, the Jazz prioritize the young guys during the season, and they try to enter the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes” “The thing that people are not understanding is that the Jazz are going to really prioritize the young guys from Day 1. And if they had their druthers, they would have traded Jordan Clarkson… they would have traded John Collins.” “Even with that, I still think the Jazz are going to de-emphasize the veterans and are going to prioritize the young guys.”
“I think the front office is going to go into this with the mindset of: we have to do anything we can to get a top 5 pick in this draft… the Jazz realize how good this draft is. And I think they are going to act accordingly, whether Lauri is on the roster or not”
There’s nothing else to do that makes any sense. Trade Lauri for most likely garbage – or remain flexible until something forces our hand to go one route or the other.
I don’t mind. Maybe we might be better than the Trailblazers (rumors say they want to trade Simons, and Grant, so they’ll likely be the worst team in the West), the Nets, and Wizards. I feel like teams like the Pistons, and Hornets might try to win games, as they got new coaches, but they might be worse then us. We’ll likely guaranteed the 6th best lottery odds, even with Lauri staying. Plus having Lauri on a contract extension makes him still have high trade value, if we decide to trade him next offseason
I dont love this, but at this point in time, if Lauri is truly on board with another mediocre season, I think its the best course of action. Perhaps as early as next offseason, danny could start cashing in on the chips.
This is the right move. Do you guys realize how bad this basketball team was after the trade deadline?
Do you realize we’ll have 6 first and second year players contributing minutes?
It’s a recipe for a tanking season and you keep the all star that wants to be here.
What’s the trade market like for Sexton? Seems like trading him is a must if they want to keep Lauri and still get a top draft pick. No one wants Clarkson or Collins.
It Was Always On. This is what Danny Ainge does. He’s a hope merchant without anymore GM friends to fleece. Once they didn’t take last year seriously you had to know they were going to play capture the Flagg. Thankfully the draft seems pretty deep. The tank is on. It was always on.
Danny messing things up for 3 years
You can give the Lauri the raise extension and in exchange he pulls a back muscle from lifting all that cash and sits out awhile.
If we got an amazing return for Lauri, I wouldn’t be against trading him and embracing the full tank. Since the offers seem mediocre at best, this seems to be the best option. I definitely think it would be idiotic to have a fire sale now for a couple extra percentage points in the lottery. I expect we’ll be pretty bad regardless, unless Kessler has a huge year or somebody else unexpectedly comes out of nowhere.
People here aren’t going to like this. But I’m going to say it anyway.
We can’t tank to a bottom 5 area (where we need to be to get Cooper Flagg) if we keep our current roster.
This is just a fact.
Our team is even better than last year, as our young talent will get better and we still only tanked to the 8-10 range.
You can’t half ass this strategy.
If we keep in our roster and don’t do any purposeful moves to bottom out, we will pick around #10 again.
And that will give us….another good role player. Is that what we want?