I disagree that the teams that fail are the ones that wobble back and forth or try to cut things short. The teams that fail are the one's who are perpetually bad and simply can't make positive moves regardless of if they are forwards/backwards moves. But I suppose being perpetually bad isn't failure in the NBA, not for some at least. Like I was saying before, there's a lot of comfort in being a terrible team if the expectation is to be a terrible team. Many teams have gotten good from breaking things down, but there are also many teams that became good out of "purgatory" and not blowing things up. From my perspective, tanking is way too often tied to success and not often enough to failure. Similarly, every bad move is considered "impatience" or "short sighted" and the conclusion is typically that they should have just tanked instead....well maybe they just made the wrong move. Doesn't mean they were headed in the wrong direction.
Got a little off topic there, but when it comes down to preferring a better chance to win versus a better chance that the franchise tanks....there's no question I prefer the better chance to win. The Jazz are completely in the *****er right now, but I would take this year's odds of winning the title over the next 10-15 years combined....maybe more. When we look back at this 3 year window as a whole, I would have to say it's the greatest opportunity this franchise has ever had to win a championship. The Stockton-Malone Jazz got further, but this 3 year period had a higher probability of winning IMO especially if you consider their missed opportunities to improve. But to be fair, I wasn't wired into the Stockton-Malone Jazz and the potential moves the franchise could have made back then.
I didn't "always" consider this year the last ride. It's undeniable that Don-Rudy is not great when they are losing, but it's just fine when they are winning. We can win with Don and Rudy, no doubt about that in my mind. Those two are really great players. To me the bottom didn't collapse because those two can't mend their differences. The bottom fell out because we put together an incredibly lopsided team that couldn't win around them. This team had enough talent, but not in the right places. (The Jazz also have a very weak playoff coach....we'll see how much of that is Quin vs the roster building in the future, but to me there's a heavy dose of both.) I actually think that if we had Marcus Smart instead of Mike Conley, for example, the Jazz would be in a MUCH better spot than they are right now and we wouldn't be hearing much about drama. So while I'm not holding onto too much hope for advancing into the playoffs, I think a WCF visit would 1) be very enjoyable to watch and a true accomplishment and 2) allow us to run it back one more year with Rudy-Don....this time doing what we should have done last summer and reconfigured the roster.
I'm also a realist and it's pretty obvious that we will never trade Don unless he absolutely demands it. Whether that's good or bad is a different discussion, but that's truth. I don't think there's an *** whooping bad enough that would ever trigger us trading Donovan...and I think Don would actually like to play here if we traded Rudy....for the short term that is.
