All those things are true in a vacuum. However, it's almost unheard of for a team to tank when they already have a healthy, in-their-prime NBA All Star on the roster. I mean... that's the situation you hope to get to by tanking (plus enduring several losing years after that).
If the only way you can "improve" your team is to waste the prime years of said All Star in order to bottom out, you're either doing something very wrong or have zero faith in the dude. And hey... maybe that's what we have here. To me it seems more and more likely that DA doesn't see Lauri as a true star, but more of a high-end role player who's destined to become a second or third banana in an ideal situation. That might even be the truth, who knows.
However, as I said in a previous post... going down the true tanking road with Lauri on the roster, possibly forced to sit out long stretches of games with a fake injury to lose enough, would be insane. Doing that just before you're supposed to renegotiate & extend the guy would be even crazier.
If the Jazz decide to tank, it has to be done without Lauri IMO. This is the major dilemma that already raised its head last season. Markkanen is just too good for a tanking team. He put a brave face on it when he was essentially made to watch his career season go down the drain in the hands of tank commander THT, but I don't think he'll go through that again and still want to resign here.
