Has our future position gotten better, worse, or stayed the same since trading Rudy/Donovan?

[jom2003]

We missed our window, which is crazy to think about cuz we literally had Josh Hart, Derrick White, Jalen Brunson, Jaden McDaniels falling to our lap. Yet we missed all of them.

Now we can only watch them competing for a title on national TV.

So just draft better will help solve a lot of our problems. We gotta make this one count.

 

[framer]

How many top picks have the Pacers and Knicks had? Just look at what teams have picked up from the bargin bin at the trade deadline. Hell, Pacers had Myles Turner on the block for years because he "didn't fit their timeline."

I was OK breaking Gobert and Mitchell into assets, that ride was over. But there is no excuse for Washington Wizarding it for a decade when we have the assets we do. The worst possible thing to happen is to wait around and make all those picks.

 

[jom2003]

How many top picks have the Pacers and Knicks had? Just look at what teams have picked up from the bargin bin at the trade deadline. Hell, Pacers had Myles Turner on the block for years because he "didn't fit their timeline."

I was OK breaking Gobert and Mitchell into assets, that ride was over. But there is no excuse for Washington Wizarding it for a decade when we have the assets we do. The worst possible thing to happen is to wait around and make all those picks.

Yep. We are falling into the dangerous trap where Hornets/Kings/Twolves been stuck for decades. Just tank in the most passive way possible and pray for lottery luck. Stacking players of the same position with no real plan of building a competitive roster.

I like what Portland's been doing acuiring all the assets from trade especially Avdija and Camara. Now they are one last piece away from becoming a real force again.

 

[GunterD]

Kinda tough to say, but I'll say worse (I am viewing this exercise as comparing our potential immediately after that trade was made, and today). Its just the nature of the stockpiling pick game, the assets depreciate. Its speculative gambling on the quality the picks turn out to be, and most of the time, they don't end up that good, just by virtue of the fact there are 30 first round picks every year, and an exponential growth in value the closer you get to the top. The closer in time you get to the pick, the less variance there is on the quality of the pick, the less, on average, the pick is worth. Gets even worse when the picks start conveying into actual players, since then you also have to actually pay them.

I say its tough though mostly because we didn't have that Suns pick when the initial trade was made, and that's probably the single most valuable asset we have right now. Also our own picks are worth a lot more than they were at that point. And Lauri panned out, and has some significant trade value, (though it is usually the case that looked at in a vacuum, when you trade a player for picks, the picks usually don't return a player as good as the one you sent out).

 

[infection]

I say its tough though mostly because we didn't have that Suns pick when the initial trade was made, and that's probably the single most valuable asset we have right now.

I have a bone to pick with this pick that I’ll detail at some point later, but it’s another speculative value one like all the Cleveland, Minnesota and Lakers picks whose value we watched go up in smoke. That is to say that we never seem to fully appreciate how quickly the landscape changes (which can work both ways). Nobody anticipated Cleveland becoming the regular season champions or Donovan to re-sign. Yet here we are. Everyone anticipated Minnesota sucking and here we are drafting in the 20s. Everyone liked the idea of “controlling someone’s draft for x years” when you include swaps, but now we’re seeing that the swaps aren’t even redeemable. Then the Lakers pick (“bro nobody could have predicted the Lakers being gifted Luka”). And the Lakers still being a dumpster fire doesn’t negate that pick from being in the 20s.

Everyone looks at the Suns future prospects now and assumes the pick will have a lot of value. Maybe it will. But there’s a high chance of volatility and them making the playoffs could also happen. If that happens, congratulations…. we’ve traded three late first rounders for one late first rounder. If that’s the case (and we’re kidding ourselves if we’re not acknowledging the real probabilities on this outcome), then the only thing keeping a deal like that from being the worst trade in history is just scale.

Everyone thought Phoenix and Chris Paul were irrelevant and one trade later they’re in the finals. Obviously it’s not exactly the same organization and not bound by some type of historical precedent magic, but it’s just one example of things changing fast. This trade sounds great but there’s a pretty good non-zero chance that it’s a complete doozy.

 

[Thee Idiotic Minivan K]

10 and 3 was the most fun I had as a fan for the past 4 years. I would kill for that over what we did yesterday.

10-3 was fleeting. What happened after that first 15% of the season. The culmination of this past season wasn’t to get the first pick but to be within the top 5 picks where there is a potential star that will hopefully help us. 10-3 was forever ago. Let it go.

 

[bigmike]

Worse at the moment, of course.

But in fairness if I’m DA I’d do it all over again.

The Rudy + Don + other vets core was never going to win a title. He did a hell of a job blowing it up at a time when trade-market returns were sky-high.

I think we’re collectively frustrated (at least I am) that we’ve sucked for a while, look like we’ll suck next year, etc. But there’s some luck involved with rebuild “timing” that has not gone our way thus far.

It sucks we’re picking #5. And it sucks that we’ll probably suck again next season. But I still believe in the general direction of 1) blowing up a core that didn’t work, 2) getting as much value back as you possibly can, and 3) cashing in on that value via draft / trade when the right opportunities present themselves.

Danny Ainge hasn’t forgotten how to do this. I just think we’re stuck in the long, meandering purgatory of #3 right now.

 

[squareinthecircle]

It's a poor time to judge IMO.

 

[infection]

It's a poor time to judge IMO.

True. And so was right after the trades, when we couldn’t fathom being where we are. That’s why I made sure to be clear that what we’re measuring and comparing is valuation.

 

[fishonjazz]

We’d be in good shape had we made the necessary moves before the season started after we traded DM and Gobert. 10-3 start was devastating.

While I agree that we should have tanked harder that first season, who was the 5th pick that year and would they really be making much of a difference?

 

[homeytennis]

Remember Ded Ex was once the fourth pick.

 

[The Midnight]

While I agree that we should have tanked harder that first season, who was the 5th pick that year and would they really be making much of a difference?

Ausar Thompson, Bilal Coulibaly were still on the board… both potential cornerstone players.

 

[Thee Idiotic Minivan K]

While I agree that we should have tanked harder that first season, who was the 5th pick that year and would they really be making much of a difference?

Maybe we get the fifth pick, but how do you know it would’ve been the fifth pick? And even if it’s the fifth pick, maybe we trade up at that point with all the assets we had back then with three picks that year.

 

[gomretat]

As pissed as we all are. Think how Ainge, Smith, Hardy ect all are. The plan backfired.
Fan support will drop significantly from all of this. Most of my friends that grew up jazz fans don't even turn any of the games on this last year. Their kids don't watch or care. Once you lose them, you don't get them back.

Someone in our family has had season tickets for over 30 years until 2 years ago when I quit. I am not sure folks will not come back but what has happened makes no sense. We are in a bad spot because we got the pick we were most likely to get and we were betting it all on being intentionally crappy.

 

[infection]

Someone in our family has had season tickets for over 30 years until 2 years ago when I quit. I am not sure folks will not come back but what has happened makes no sense. We are in a bad spot because we got the pick we were most likely to get and we were betting it all on being intentionally crappy.

I think people are more open to considering this after the emotions of the lottery coming on the heels of an entire season of building anticipation. But the reality is that even if we were to have won the lottery, we still have a very, very steep hill and great chasm in front of that still requires a massive amount of luck and perfect execution to get to. That is, if we're talking about a championship. If we're talking about being a playoff team yeah, sure, whatever. But that wasn't the reason we got ourselves into this thing to be a "good" playoff team. But because everyone has been beaten down by the process, I'd imagine people would be thrilled at the possibility of seeing a "playoff" team take place (even with Flagg... lots of teams like Dallas with Luka or current Giannis with Milwaukee, etc.) and fail to realize that the goal posts moved and that team still is far away from championship aspirations.

tl;dr Even if we won this year, we'd still need to hit a massive home run next year, in addition to numerous triples and doubles in the next few years, all without striking out because it's already 2 down.

So while the emotion is allowing people to more clearly see reality, this reality has always been there.

 

[GunterD]

I have a bone to pick with this pick that I’ll detail at some point later, but it’s another speculative value one like all the Cleveland, Minnesota and Lakers picks whose value we watched go up in smoke. That is to say that we never seem to fully appreciate how quickly the landscape changes (which can work both ways). Nobody anticipated Cleveland becoming the regular season champions or Donovan to re-sign. Yet here we are. Everyone anticipated Minnesota sucking and here we are drafting in the 20s. Everyone liked the idea of “controlling someone’s draft for x years” when you include swaps, but now we’re seeing that the swaps aren’t even redeemable. Then the Lakers pick (“bro nobody could have predicted the Lakers being gifted Luka”). And the Lakers still being a dumpster fire doesn’t negate that pick from being in the 20s.

Everyone looks at the Suns future prospects now and assumes the pick will have a lot of value. Maybe it will. But there’s a high chance of volatility and them making the playoffs could also happen. If that happens, congratulations…. we’ve traded three late first rounders for one late first rounder. If that’s the case (and we’re kidding ourselves if we’re not acknowledging the real probabilities on this outcome), then the only thing keeping a deal like that from being the worst trade in history is just scale.

Everyone thought Phoenix and Chris Paul were irrelevant and one trade later they’re in the finals. Obviously it’s not exactly the same organization and not bound by some type of historical precedent magic, but it’s just one example of things changing fast. This trade sounds great but there’s a pretty good non-zero chance that it’s a complete doozy.

I'm actually not saying the pick is the most valuable asset because I think the Suns will be bad by the time it comes around and we will be able to use it to draft a good player. Its valuable as a trade asset because it doesn't convey for 6 years. The variance therefore contains a non-trivial possibility that the pick may end up in the ultra-valuable upper range of the draft, and is therefore worth more, today, than any other picks we own outside of our own that convey over the next 2-3 years. The pick will likely depreciate in value like the others have as time passes, so if it is not used in a trade in the next couple years it will probably devalue. But right now, today, it is quite valuable.

Though the whole crappy system they've developed around the draft that encourages 2/3 of the league to tank every year to some degree and 5 or so teams to tank hard every year kind of devalues it. Since they don't own the pick they won't have incentive to tank hard, so no matter how crappy their team is in 6 years, it'll be hard for them to accidentally lose more than the myriad teams trying to lose on purpose. So instead of having a shot at being good on its own, the best you can probably hope for is for it to be in the 10 ish range, and then also win the lottery. The possibility of that happening still makes it valuable though for speculation purposes.

 

[gomretat]

I think people are more open to considering this after the emotions of the lottery coming on the heels of an entire season of building anticipation. But the reality is that even if we were to have won the lottery, we still have a very, very steep hill and great chasm in front of that still requires a massive amount of luck and perfect execution to get to. That is, if we're talking about a championship. If we're talking about being a playoff team yeah, sure, whatever. But that wasn't the reason we got ourselves into this thing to be a "good" playoff team. But because everyone has been beaten down by the process, I'd imagine people would be thrilled at the possibility of seeing a "playoff" team take place (even with Flagg... lots of teams like Dallas with Luka or current Giannis with Milwaukee, etc.) and fail to realize that the goal posts moved and that team still is far away from championship aspirations.

tl;dr Even if we won this year, we'd still need to hit a massive home run next year, in addition to numerous triples and doubles in the next few years, all without striking out because it's already 2 down.

So while the emotion is allowing people to more clearly see reality, this reality has always been there.

Agreed. And there was no reason to put the Jazz in that deep of a hole. Danny got incredibly lucky in Boston and seems to assume he will get incredibly lucky again. I would rather have a plan.

 

[Coach Ellis]

I'm actually not saying the pick is the most valuable asset because I think the Suns will be bad by the time it comes around and we will be able to use it to draft a good player. Its valuable as a trade asset because it doesn't convey for 6 years. The variance therefore contains a non-trivial possibility that the pick may end up in the ultra-valuable upper range of the draft, and is therefore worth more, today, than any other picks we own outside of our own that convey over the next 2-3 years. The pick will likely depreciate in value like the others have as time passes, so if it is not used in a trade in the next couple years it will probably devalue. But right now, today, it is quite valuable.

Though the whole crappy system they've developed around the draft that encourages 2/3 of the league to tank every year to some degree and 5 or so teams to tank hard every year kind of devalues it. Since they don't own the pick they won't have incentive to tank hard, so no matter how crappy their team is in 6 years, it'll be hard for them to accidentally lose more than the myriad teams trying to lose on purpose. So instead of having a shot at being good on its own, the best you can probably hope for is for it to be in the 10 ish range, and then also win the lottery. The possibility of that happening still makes it valuable though for speculation purposes.

The nice thing about an unprotected pick that far out though, is that IF the Jazz can turn it around AND the Suns are garbage then, you give yourself the potential to add a top draft prospect at a time that you have no business being in that position. I’d much rather own other teams draft picks and be able to build my strongest team possible in order to make that scenario play out.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

Worse. I think Lauri and Walker were good surprises but we didn't sell off Lauri and haven't hit big on any of our picks or gotten lucky. I wouldn't say its way worse but its worse.