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Why is Lowe so fixated on shipping Lauri off to Detroit? Because that’s the industry: guys like him build careers by issuing grand, authoritative proclamations about what teams should do, handing down verdicts from the studio desk like NBA Solomon, without ever having to live with a single...

Anyone who’s seen the movie *Airplane!* will remember the running gag with Lloyd Bridges’ character in the control tower: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking… stop drinking… stop sniffing glue,” each line more absurd than the last. This NBA season feels a bit like that. Between...

I really hope you're right, assuming we trade him. I fear that we trade him to a contender and end up with a collection of cast-offs (e.g., Kuminga), hoping to benefit from a new situation and mid-to-late firsts. Thus, while all the podcasters, pundits, blog boys, etc., gush about what a great...

I understand why so many fans are eager to trade Lauri; after all, that 2026 lottery pick is a shiny object that’s hard to look away from. But as my recent post on the Jazz’s lottery odds and the NBA’s tanking landscape showed, we’re nowhere near the point where panic-trading Lauri is necessary...

Dumars belongs in the same tier of decision-makers as Nico Harrison, Vlade Divac, and Ryan McDonough—the latter two famously passing on Luka Dončić in favor of Marvin Bagley and DeAndre Ayton. These are GMs who seemed convinced they were seeing something no one else could, dismissing the obvious...

The best one can do is play the odds, curse or no curse. (And because curses aren't real, that'd be no curse.) With so many teams this year that are worse than the Jazz and/or have an incentive to tank the season, I just don't see us finishing with one of the four worst records in the league...

Hey everyone. With so much chatter lately about the Jazz’s 2026 draft pick situation and what level of “tanking” might actually be necessary to keep it, I wanted to step back and take a more systematic look at where things stand to ground the discussion in some numbers and realistic scenarios...

Let me summarize where things stand at the moment. Six games in, the Jazz are 2-4, tied for the third-worst record in the league. The Jazz tanked hard in 2024-25 to land a top draft pick, securing the worst record in the league with a paltry 17 wins compared to 65 losses. They were...

I, in turn, care about definitions. Unless we're clear about what we mean by tanking, there's no prospect for a productive and critical discussion of it. I'll grant that tanking has probably existed in one form or another over the years, but that's irrelevant to the current discussion around...

Some observations: Do I think that Ballmer was complicit in this side deal with Kawai? Yes, I do. Do I think that anyone will find a “smoking gun” proving Ballmer’s complicity? Probably not. Do I think that other NBA teams engage in similar chicanery? I absolutely do. At the very least, they...

Well said. The only point I take issue with is the prevalence of tanking. Sure, tanking in one form or another has always existed. My frame of reference is the structural tank, defined as follows: The organization conducts a strategic, structural teardown of an existing team, trading established...

That is my #1 pet peeve: being constantly told by NBA writers, podcasters, commentators, and others that the regular season doesn't matter and that all that matters is winning in the playoffs. How could we be so naive as to consider it an entertainment product and want, therefore, to be...

For me, the Jazz are a diversion from the pressures and stresses of life. Getting emotionally invested in something relatively trivial, benign, and ultimately inconsequential, but at the same time entertaining, has long been an escape for me. That's one reason why I care much more for the...

LOL, pretty much the same internal dialogue I've been having lately. I'll continue to follow this year mostly to root for the youngsters, but if I see the Jazz pulling the same shiite as last year (i.e., intentionally manipulating games to lose), I'll pull the plug. It's hard to get too...

It's not clear to me whether NBA "reporters" (term used very loosely) just make this shiite up for clicks or are actually reporting something they've heard that someone else heard some shiite someone pulled out of their backside. This thread is evidence that someone is paying attention to this...

What we see in this thread is healthy skepticism that there is particular "path" to building a championship team. Yet, the Jazz FO was so confident that there was a path, and this path involved completely dismantling a winning team and condemning the team, it fans, its corporate sponsors, etc...

That was a long past era of OKC basketball. I struggle to understand why it's relevant to the current context.

Very well said.

The OKC "model" hinges on getting a future league MVP in a trade. Without that bit of luck (nobody expected SGA to be THIS good), it seems improbably that OCK would have won the title. That aspect of its rebuild is highly unlikely to be replicated by the Jazz or anyone else. In general terms...

In a world of the NBA media-scape where pundits with platforms routinely make bold pronouncements with undeserved confidence, Tony Jones stands out.