What a **** show. We had no business being the ones including second rounders in that deal, let alone two. Now we’ve traded something worth more than a late first. I remember a lot of people always dismissing the lack of value in second rounders picks in Ainge deals, jettisoning them or leaving them on the table in other deals. And to your point about it being nice to have other people’s seconds to play with… yeah. “They’re just second rounders. Why so upset lol.”
I don't see it that way and didn't at the time. There was always something very deflating about that Lakers' pick because it was top 5 protected. Hoping for it being a good pick is like playing black jack and hitting on 18. I stated multiple times that it is very much within the realm of realistic possibility that we will have given up more than we got back, especially without a guaranteed first rounder built into the conditions. I have similar feelings to the recent Suns trade that I have yet to elaborate on. It's not out of the realm of reasonable probability that the pick ends up being of the caliber of the multiple others we sent for it. Of course everyone sees everything from the lens of now and tries to project what's happening now onto what the landscape will look like an eternity from now. So too with the Lakers. It's cute to assume AD falls off a cliff and LeBron retires and they become bottom dwellers but that's not realistic. Just because nobody could have seen a Luka trade doesn't mean that the Lakers can't pull stuff out of their ***, which they are bound to do. If you have the belief of them just sucking on one extreme and believing they'd land Luka for scraps on the other, I'd hate to say it but the latter scenario is closer to reality than the assumptions we were making on the other end. But we can repeat this about the Suns, too, but with less of a track record of quickly getting back on track than the Lakers.
Definitely hindsight, but how else do you evaluate the moves a tanking GM makes? Have any moves looked better than they originally did with hindsight? I’d give credit the same way I give blame.
We still feel good about that pick even though they have Luka now?
I just judge moves based on the soundness of the logic behind them. Getting a Lakers pick top 4 protected was a great move. We only had to deal an aging PG and a rotation player who seemed close to out of the NBA (though yes, he was having a good season that last year with Utah).
This is kind of like someone saying, hey, you need disability insurance to protect yourself. Someone blows it off and then ends up having a windmill fall on their car, piercing through their windshield, severing your spine and leaving you a quadriplegic, then says, "Woah, buddy. Nobody could have predicted a windmill would break, pierce through a windshield, severe a spine and leave someone a quadriplegic. Nobody could have predicted that." It's entirely missing the point. Scissor mishap, air show disaster, Chinese organ thieves. There's a myriad of outliers that are improbable. But there are also an infinite combination of potential outliers and to say that one outlier is unlikely does not mean the total sum of all outliers is. I'll make my Phoenix trade post at some point in the future to get it on record so that nobody in 2031 can say "Bro, this is a trade that you can only recognize as having the potential for being this bad in hindsight. Nobody could have predicted _______."
My biggest issue that I repeated numerous times is that we may not even get a pick. Either the Lakers are decent and you're getting a pick in the 20s or beyond, or they're horrible and you get nothing, or they're in between in what I'd call the danger zone, where after the lottery you're either really happy with your mid-first round pick or you traded a bunch of vets with some value (and allowed LA to salary dump) while also throwing in two second round picks and then coming out of the deal with one second round pick. I consistently said that pick needed to be the first one to be moved and that its value will be most realized as a currency in another deal and while the perception of its value is still higher than its actual value.
What? He was the engine behind the Jazz playing way above expectations.
Seems like it would’ve been easy to tuck a 2nd into each of the Gobert and Mitchell deals as a closing cost and nobody would’ve batted an eye. Probably could’ve done some of the weird red paper clip stuff they pulled this year at some point over the previous two seasons.
I remember starting a thread about how I didn't think Conley was cooked. Which proves I was right, but also that there were many who thought he was.
Sure, he helped raise the Jazz's floor with his leadership, but I really didnt expect him to be that good with Minnesota. He shot 41/36 shooting splits in that last half year in Utah and that was following him being awful in the last Utah playoff series.
Overall, I agree with this AND I think it’s reasonable to assume that there’s a decent chance that the Wolves will give Utah at least one decent pick during that time frame. They were on the razors edge of the lottery this year, and a handful of games that could swing either way kept them in the 20’s. I could easily see a major falloff for them - especially if AE ever gets hurt.
Conley and Rudy also don't have much tread left on their tires either.
Don’t think I agree with you on this one. Here’s my sense of how things played out, some based on reporting and others conjecture.
