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Jazz hire Celtics Assistant GM Austin Ainge as new President of Basketball Operations

gomretat said:
The "customer" reaction to the last few years is getting progressively worse and it has to be obvious to Ryan that he has lost a lot of viewership - particularly now that banking on luck didnt work. I will be very surprised if we sit our best players or pull them in the 4th during close games going forward. The real question is whether we trade our best players. Either way I think going forward we try and win games with whatever talent level we have. A welcome change in my opinion and one that will re-engage many fans.
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It does look like Ryan hired Austin to explore whether we can find other ways to move forward than tanking. We’ll see. I’d be surprised if everyone at the FO is on the same page.
 
underdog said:
It does look like Ryan hired Austin to explore whether we can find other ways to move forward than tanking. We’ll see. I’d be surprised if everyone at the FO is on the same page.
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Doesnt really matter. Even if they make decissions as a collective the big picture and direction is determined by Ryan 1st, AA 2nd.
 
Tremendous Upside said:
It's also ****ing unbelievable.

Literally back where we started from after the Gobert/Mitchell trades. No, scratch that – we're much worse off. That team was a legit playoff contender (with one or two reinforcements, easily acquired with Danny's treasure chest of assets) and had a younger, cheaper Lauri playing with a chip on his shoulder. Team wide passing mindset, steady vets, no egos…

The current team has lots of youth and little promise, plus a jaded, overpaid Lauri on a downhill trajectory.

Great job by Ainge. Really something that had to be rewarded by hiring his nepo baby.
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We are much worse off. I have no problem with rebuilds or being patient but the problem with this process is it was entirely self inflicted and we counted on the luck of the draw to bail us out. The irony for me is that it now seems like Smith hired Austin to take a different approach from what Danny was doing.
 
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Add nepotism to the list of things that are only prohibited and sanctioned for us lowly plebs, along with the likes of conflict of interest, bribery, grifting, general corruption, lying, infidelity, etc.
 
Funny enough, the year to All-out tank - even if you got less than ideal value back -would’ve been 22/23 after blowing up the team, and then pivot to trying to win with whatever you ended up with in 23/24. Even without trying, they were basically a play-in team leading up to the deadline. Pay out the pick in a crap draft and then pivot again to doing whatever you can to compete. The lure of winning the Cooper Flagg lottery was just too much to pass up.
 
Schrödinger's Gerbil said:
Plenty of coaches have been fired with plenty of years left on their contracts. It would hardly be a precedent.
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Will Hardy is AA guy even if he didnt hire him. They used to share office walls in Boston and Austin spoke very highly of him.

The way Ryan and DA also talk about him indicates that he is the savior more than any player currently on the roster.

I would bet his leash is very long.
 
HermanG said:
Will Hardy is AA guy even if he didnt hire him. They used to share office walls in Boston and Austin spoke very highly of him.

The way Ryan and DA also talk about him indicates that he is the savior more than any player currently on the roster.

I would bet his leash is very long.
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Could very well be. But, when a sacrifice is required, shiite flows downhill. At some point, he's going to be accountable; no honeymoon lasts forever.
 
Coach Ellis said:
Funny enough, the year to All-out tank - even if you got less than ideal value back -would’ve been 22/23 after blowing up the team, and then pivot to trying to win with whatever you ended up with in 23/24. Even without trying, they were basically a play-in team leading up to the deadline. Pay out the pick in a crap draft and then pivot again to doing whatever you can to compete. The lure of winning the Cooper Flagg lottery was just too much to pass up.
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Notwithstanding the incredibly low odds of winning the lottery. IF indeed that single low probability event was what drove "strategy" over the past year, that's clear-cut FO malfeasance.
 
No one wins when you are stuck in the middle,
Coach Ellis said:
Funny enough, the year to All-out tank - even if you got less than ideal value back -would’ve been 22/23 after blowing up the team, and then pivot to trying to win with whatever you ended up with in 23/24. Even without trying, they were basically a play-in team leading up to the deadline. Pay out the pick in a crap draft and then pivot again to doing whatever you can to compete. The lure of winning the Cooper Flagg lottery was just too much to pass up.
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Bill Simmons, who knows Danny pretty well once said that Danny's goal is to win every trade. That seems very evident in what we have seen in Utah and at least in part explains why we have been stuck in the middle
 
gomretat said:
No one wins when you are stuck in the middle,

Bill Simmons, who knows Danny pretty well once said that Danny's goal is to win every trade. That seems very evident in what we have seen in Utah and at least in part explains why we have been stuck in the middle
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More people win when you're stuck in the middle than when you're spinning your wheels on the lottery treadmill year after year.

What is the "middle" anyway? I'm curious how you define it.
 
You probably knew something like this would be coming, after I this past season or two providing evidence that tanking is overrated, that it doesn't very reliably produce the results we're hoping the Jazz have, and that the value of draft picks (difference between high and low picks) seems to be converging somewhat in recent years. And with all of the hullabaloo after the A. Ainge hire over the question of whether it's franchise malpractice to risk next year's pick and whether we should move players at below-market value to do that, maybe this bit of data is worth thinking about:

Of the final four playoff teams (before the Pacers' victory in Game 1 last night) -- categorization of players on the roster by draft position:
Number of players
1-10: 11
11-20: 12
20-30: 13
After 30: 23

Playoff total win shares
1-10: 10.9
11-20: 10.5
20-30: 8.1
After 30: 11.7

For this year's best teams, having a high draft pick increases your odds of doing well over lower picks. But just barely. The differences are likely much smaller than I think we imagine. These teams have, in Ainge's words, stacked, many good moves on top of each other. It may be far more important that we make good moves generally than that we just maximize our draft position. Maybe protecting next year's pick shouldn't be considered the end-all and be-all of the franchise's future. Protecting the pick might end up as the best move we can make, but I hardly think we can make that decision before the front office checks out what other options might be available.
 
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