Kragthorpe: Jazz fans will have to pay for trade with patience
By Kurt Kragthorpe
Tribune Columnist
Published: February 23, 2011 10:56AM
Updated: February 23, 2011 10:34AM
Apparently, I was not exaggerating last week when I declared the Jazz’s season over.
The trade of All-Star point guard Deron Williams to New Jersey means a team struggling just to make the playoffs will have even more trouble getting there now. The 2010-11 season is being written off by the Jazz with their actions, beyond anything I could have said.
Dealing D-Will to the Nets tops any previous losses in Jazz history, including Adrian Dantley and Carlos Boozer.
But you know what?
I like this deal. As much as I was initially shocked by the idea of Williams being traded, to the point of thinking somebody was just joking, the Jazz are getting a lot for a player they potentially would lose via free agency in 2012 with nothing in return.
Devin Harris is not an All-Star, but he’s a decent point guard. Rookie forward Derrick Favors was the No. 3 pick, the kind of player the Jazz wanted and needed in the draft. And depending on when those first-round picks will come, general manager Kevin O’Connor should produce two more building blocks.
Look, this is not about devaluing D-Will, or being glad to see him go. Williams blended well into Utah, and he was always driven to win. Is that so wrong? And who knows if and when the Jazz would have lost to him to another team, for sure? So this a stunning move, the kind of transaction that will make the Jazz worse before they get better.
They will get better someday, though, and that’s the point of the whole thing. The Jazz are nowhere near contending for a championship, and they’re hardly moving in that direction at the moment. The state of the franchise cried out for doing something different, for once.
This is so unlike the Jazz that it’s refreshing. Actually, this is so much bigger than trading for Jeff Hornacek in February 1994 or anything else this famously conservative franchise has done that it’s a little scary, right?
But it also is what so many fans supposedly have wanted. Amid all the suggestions, logically founded or emotionally driven, that the Jazz should just blow it up and tear it apart and start all over, well, they’ve gone and done it.
Man, this all happened fast. Carlos Boozer is gone. Jerry Sloan is gone. And now Williams is gone.
You wanted change? You’ve got it. And now you have to pay for it with patience.
That will be something of a tough sell, in a market that’s accustomed to winning seasons, if not NBA titles. Fans will have to sign up for a building project, as opposed to being rewarded with any kind of playoff run this spring.
But that was not going to happen, anyway. In a positive development, this trade does away with the D-Will Watch, the vigil between now and July 2012 regarding his future. The Jazz can move forward now and make plans. O’Connor and coach Tyrone Corbin can build something.
Harris, who turns 28 on Sunday, is a solid player. Favors could grow into something special. This summer, when Andrei Kirilenko’s contract expires, the Jazz will have another $17 million to work with.
Unless they wanted to remain stuck in the middle of the Western Conference forever, the Jazz had to do something like this. The amazing thing is, they really did it.
For those who were calling for change from these guys, never imagining they would get it, this is a monumental breakthrough. So they’d better not have any seller’s remorse.
Coincidentally enough, as the trade deadline approached, I was compiling my All-Time Ex-Jazz Team, hardly thinking that anyone would be added to the list of Dantley, Boozer, Bernard King, Dell Curry, Karl Malone, Derek Fisher and others.
Now, 25 years after Dantley’s departure, another of the top five players in Utah Jazz history is gone. But the Jazz believe they’ll be better for it — if not now, in 2012 and beyond. That’s the plan, anyway.
kkragthorpe@sltrib.com
