The Philadelphia 76ers aren't going to give away the No. 3 pick for nothing, so they're going to take something from the Jazz. And that "something" is going to be something big, which is scary.
And where did the Cleveland Cavaliers go? They didn't even make it to the conference finals. They got a proven ace in the league for years in Donovan Mitchell, and they still got to the second round. If Philadelphia said, "I'll give you the third pick and Paul George, and you give me the 21st pick and Walker Kessler and Markkanen," would the Jazz take that? If the Jazz got that third pick, who would they take? Ace Bailey, VJ Edgecomb, or Tre Johnson? Would that be better for the future of the Jazz?
The fact that they played patty cake with it initially instead of embracing it in the first place means that they haven’t had an identity since before they traded Mitchell and Gobert. I personally HATE that they made the trade with OKC which has had them handcuffed the past 2 seasons plus now the upcoming one.
There’s probably only one surefire way to **** with the fan support that the Jazz have enjoyed for decades and it begins with ownership adopting the mentality that fans will put up with anything.
It doesn't matter what we want, but what team ownership and the league wants. And what team ownership wants is to be fiscally solvent, and what the team ownership and the league want is to make as much money as possible. And the Jazz hit on that formula long ago, which is to tap into the cultish nature of the dominant social construct in the state, i.e. the mormons, and get the team a cult following, so the money flows, such as it is, regardless of the level of "success" the team reaches, at least from a fan perspective. So until fans stop coming to games, and the money starts to ebb, the team (and league in respect to the Jazz organization) will continue in the same vein: moderate success that keeps butts in the seats. They don't care about swinging for the fences, and the league doesn't care about providing the Jazz a path to better outcomes, as long as the money keep coming in, and it does so they don't.
I don't know that you should denigrate fans of a team for hating what we did last year. Some people like to watch basketball.
Who's the AJ you're talking about?
But ownership has had that attitude for decades. This is why they never made any striking moves really during any era of Jazz basketball. They have been content to let things ride as long as they could say they were banking on "off-season growth" and hand pads and gaining 15 lbs of muscle to reach the next level, they had no need to try any kind of swing for the fences move that might poke the fan-base in the eye. Some fans want the homestar runner type move, but most just want to have a fun night out and say they are Jazz fans and feel like they are part of a secondary cult in addition to their primary cult. The same fans that will tell people they don't do any shopping or spend any money on Sundays, until a vendor at work offers box seats to a meaningless mid-season Sunday game at the Delta Center, which they attend enthusiastically, stating well, THEY didn't spend the money, the vendor did, and just buying popcorn and a soda doesn't really count, right? This is why they have no impetus to push for anything big to get the franchise in a position to win it all, since it is all so safe and secure and profitable as it stands. Add into this the fact that the league benefits a ton more with a Dallas/Spurs/Sixers top 3 draft positions than they do a Jazz/Charlotte/Washington trio, and we will never get the top picks necessary to build from the draft for real. So the fan base is content having their Sunday night game for "free" and believing their fervent prayers were answered when we happen to hit on a mid- or late-first-round draft pick who bucks the trend, ala Mitchell and Gobert, which is likely to happen often enough to keep the spending fan-base in tow.
Sadly, I can’t argue with any of this.
You realize that this quite feasibly means an indeterminate period of multiple years of non-competitive, non-playoff basketball? As I previously indicated, it's not unlikely that this stretches to 7 years (more or less) all told. You're willing to endure that for WHAT, precisely? What's the payoff you would expect for such an extended period of misery? An NBA title? Consistent deep playoff runs (i.e., minimum consistent second round, but as we're seeing with Cleveland, it's unlikely that would be considered acceptable). (NBA title and consistent deep playoff runs are the expectations explicitly cited by the Jazz FO.) For how many years? At least 7 (or the equivalent of the tank), right? What's the likelihood of seven sustained years of deep playoff runs? The Jazz have never managed that since the Stockton-Malone days. What are the odds that failure to deliver 7 consecutive years of deep playoff runs (which is the more likely scenario) will lead to renewed calls to "tear it down?"
I’d never suggest that my method is perfect, only just one way of doing things. I honestly don’t think the Jazz are even that terrible right now. If they weren’t deliberately trying to lose, I think they could easily flip their position and at least make the play-in round.
Well said.
I'd argue instead that most fans want to watch competitive, meaningful basketball over an 82 games season with hope of making a deep post-season run. Basketball is an entertainment product, and people who consume it want to be entertained. It's true that the Jazz continue to sell out games, but for those of us buying tickets on the secondary market, the tickets in the last few years have generally sold at a significant discount over previous years. I went to several games last year with decent upper bowl seats (Row 7 and below) for as little as $15. There's no way in hell I would have paid the $40+ I paid in previous years for the same seats. I assume my experience was generalized among the secondary ticket market leading me to conclude that the sold out arena pro-tankers like to cite is a bit of a mirage. I imagine that TV and streaming ratings were down last year, though that's to be confirmed.
