What are the offseason plans for the Utah Jazz? Well, that depends on the rest of the NBA
As the NBA’s play-in tournament and then the NBA Playoffs kick off this week, there’s probably not a team around the league that is rooting for chaos the way the Utah Jazz are.
Drama, chaos, uncertainty and busted expectations are all things that could play into the Jazz’s hand. A disgruntled star or an ownership group that is fed up with lackluster results is exactly what the Jazz need. They need a team to be willing to deal away a player that would change the direction of a team, and that only happens when players are not happy or teams are not achieving at the level they believe they should.
The Jazz brass is not pretending that this is a free-agent destination or that there are a great pool of top-tier free agents available. They know that they have to draft and trade their way back into Western Conference contention.
“If you study the free agent trends — and this is not unique to the Jazz, it’s every other team that’s not on a coast — the actual depth and quality of the free agents is not great, and it’s not going to get any better,” Jazz general manager Justin Zanik said earlier this month. “So that doesn’t mean it’s completely out. It’s just not going to be a main driver of how you build teams. The main driver of how you’re building teams is developing your players, adding by trade.”
So the Jazz front office will be watching how the postseason unfolds very closely. They have a treasure chest of assets including picks in the upcoming 2024 draft and beyond, as well as a roster full of young talent, and they’re more than willing to put together a pretty enticing package for a team that is willing to start wheeling and dealing.
But, if the NBA drama is lacking this offseason, or a player isn’t made available that the Jazz believe could take them to the next level for an extended number of years, then they might have to recalibrate.
“We’re ready to roll, we’re ready to go big-game hunting,” Jazz CEO Danny Ainge said on Tuesday. “That hasn’t happened in the last two years, but if we start all over, then we’re three years, possibly four years from being anywhere. We feel like we’re closer than that, and we have a chance. We’re going all in this summer.
“When I say ‘all in,’ that doesn’t mean that we’re going to throw all our chips in, like championship or bust. I’m saying our mindset is that we’re doing everything only to try to win. That’s our only objective ... and if we don’t land anything, we don’t make any deals, we don’t land anything, then our direction could change.”
If the Jazz were to go through this offseason without adding some significant talent to the team, they’d be facing a 2024 training camp with a roster that would largely be made up of players that are either rookies or second-year players. That’s not what Ainge wants. He does not want September to roll around and have six players that are under 20 on the roster.
That being said, because the Jazz are going to be dependent on trades in order to improve the roster, the way the roster looks at the end of this offseason will largely depend on what happens around the league. What the Jazz have going for them is flexibility, which is what the last two years have been about creating. They have cap space, assets on all fronts and they can pivot easily depending on the situation.
Ainge, in explaining how critical optionality is when trying to create a winning team, used his experience with the Boston Celtics as an example. In 2007, the Celtics had hoped to land a top-three pick in the draft and take Kevin Durant to play with Paul Pierce. But the Celtics ended up with fifth pick and the Seattle Super Sonics ended up at No. 2 and took Durant.
All of a sudden, the Sonics were willing to make a deal for one of their other stars, Ray Allen, and later on the Celtics were able to make a huge offer to Minnesota for Kevin Garnett.
“We had Paul Pierce, and Paul was a terrific player, an All-Star player, Hall of Fame player,” Ainge said. “We lost 19 games in a row in 2007, and our plan was Kevin Durant. But when the lottery came around, we got knocked back three spots to No. 5 and our plan changed immediately. We were able to eventually land Ray Allen and K.G., which were never available before that moment in time. But we were there and we were ready.”
Without the assets and other teams willing to pivot away from their original plans, the Celtics would not have been able to form the team that won the 2008 NBA title. That’s what the Jazz are trying to position themselves to be able to do, but they also aren’t going to be going after just any type of player.
Ainge said on Tuesday that the Jazz aren’t chasing aging players, rather they are looking for players that are in their prime that could give the Jazz some longevity when it comes to winning.
“We’re not really interested in dinosaurs,” he said. “We’re interested in like, good six or seven years guys, those are good players. I’m not saying that we wouldn’t go get some veteran players for a short-term fix while we take buy us some time. But that’s not as likely.”
No matter the situation — a short-term fix with an older player, or a big trade for a player in the prime of his career — the Jazz want to make moves and they want to move up in the Western Conference, but it takes two to tango. So what are the Jazz’s offseason plans? Wait for the drama to unfold and then jump into the fray.
