This wasn't proven. If Chris Paul was hurt for the playoffs and the suns got bounced then you could say that the suns gm cannot build a great team.
If the jazz had got Torrey Craig and Tucker instead of niang and Matt Thomas and the jazz lost in the playoffs with no Conley then we could still be criticizing the jazz moves.
Sometimes you need more than great general managing. Sometimes you need some luck too. The jazz didn't get that luck on the playoffs. Opposite in fact
What if we shop bogey, Clarkson, etc for some starting level perimeter defense and then next year in the playoffs we get bounced cause we can't get a bucket when it counts? Do you say, well the jazz did everything right and everything I asked for and it didn't work. I was wrong. Or do you just criticize something else?
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No, I give ‘em credit for taking a risk and trying something new.
I’m expecting a blow-up or at least a major pivot of some kind next offseason unless we advance to at least the conference finals. If we tweak the starting lineup and rotation a bit and it doesn’t work, I’d just say “well, it didn’t work out, but at least we took a risk and tried something we thought could have made us better. And we’re exactly where I thought we’d be anyway—blowing it up. At least we tried.”
Also, if we trade Bogey and lose in the second round next year, there’s no way to evaluate if the “Jazz were right” or not, because we very well may have lost even with Bogey. We’d never know.
If we’re talking luck, an underdiscussed point is that our #1 seed was the product of a whole lot of luck and circumstance, including other teams suffering dramatic injuries during our stretch run, not playing other top teams at full strength and picking up easy wins, and being far enough ahead in the standings and having a weak enough schedule to end the season to keep the #1 seed despite Don’s injury.
The reality is, we struggled against top teams at full strength and we struggled against ANY teams with good athleticism and length (WINLESS against the Suns and T’Wolves, two athletic teams on both ends of the spectrum).
In the playoffs, we struggled in every game save 1 against the 9th place Memphis Grizzlies, and struggled in every game against the Clippers. Had Don not gone nuclear, these playoffs would have been extremely embarrassing, not just disappointing.
There are serious deficiencies in the length and athleticism of this team. Aside from Don and Rudy, every other member of the team is average to below average athletically for their position (and even Rudy really struggles with functional athleticism). This past season was tons of fun, but you’ve gotta see these issues.
