However much you believe that Blazer value Keon, the Jazz could have absolutely beat it in a way that would have improved the team. You can go back to the threads when this happened. It's fine to change your opinion, but don't act like this is some kind of crazy opinion. Everyone thought LAC got away with one. We can agree to disagree here, but this trade really makes it hard for to believe that we tried everything we could and didn't find a way to improve the team. It's not like Roco and Powell. There was a long list of players that would have really brought something to this team, some of them probably couldn't be acquire, but I just can't get behind the idea that these guys were impossible to get and that we tried everything we could to do something. The theory that Keon's value to POR was so high the trade couldn't be done just isn't very plausible to me.
So how does that happen, why did we not do that? It can be a couple different things. Either Ainge/FO was unaware that he could make that deal could be made, or it was not in alignment with the plan that they had already decided on to blow it up. I initially thought that Part Time Danny was a thing and he might have just been content to collect a check from his friend, but given what's happened in this off-season and Danny's history, I've begun to believe that he probably came in with the plan to blow things up already. That makes the most sense to me and I think it gives Danny the benefit of the doubt. At the very least, I think he had a good idea of what he wanted and that he was tilted towards blowing it up versus building around Don/Rudy. That's fine, but it's just my personal opinion that we should have valued the opportunity of having Don/Rudy together more than we did. Yes
The other option would be that they actually thought this team was good enough or better without those trades. Like I said, they wouldn't be the only people who that. I still can't believe the moaning and groaning we had on the idea of acquiring Smart, but I do have to acknowledge that it wasn't popular to actually want to execute that trade. I don't know if Danny would have traded Bogey for Smart straight up or if that was even an option, but I do know people heavily opposed that trade on this forum. If that's the case, it's certainly not a "we tried everything we could". It fits into that grass isn't always greener attitude that I mentioned.
That deal got Portland under the tax and added 20M onto the Clippers luxury tax payment. We don’t have an asset like Keon plus would we have been willing to add that much long-term salary and add that much to our luxury tax payment? Are those two the difference in us making it to the Finals minus the pieces we would have sent out as well?