After Utah Jazz CEO Danny Ainge was very straightforward Monday in expressing why the team traded Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell this summer, the Jazz were a topic of conversation on ESPN’s “NBA Today,” with Brian Windhorst and Ramona Shelburne joining host Malika Andrews.
Windhorst said that for as blunt as Ainge was in expressing that “What I saw during the season was a group of players that really didn’t believe in each other,” his feelings were probably dialed back considerably for Monday’s press conference.
Windhorst and Shelburne then discussed what they foresee from Ainge and the rest of the front office in terms of additional trades.
“It feels like they have a lot more business to do. The question is when do they do that business?” Shelburne said.
She went on to say that “the sense around the league” is that the Jazz could execute trades for Bojan Bogdanovic, Jordan Clarkson and Mike Conley, and it’s just a matter of when they want to do it.
Shelburne and Windhorst did have some disagreement about how urgent they feel the Jazz might be in making moves, with Shelburne expressing that the current group could be given a chance to see what it can do and Windhorst saying the team wants to be as bad as possible as quickly as it can.
“If they start out well this year, it’s an absolute disaster,” Windhorst said. “They do not want to win many games. They want to be as high in (next summer’s draft) lottery as possible.”
Windhorst also pointed out that the Jazz have 17 guaranteed contracts on the roster right now, and that number must be trimmed to 15 before the first game of the season on Oct. 19, which all but requires them to make additional moves of significance before then.
Windhorst expressed a common sentiment that Bogdanovic should be easy to trade for a valuable return, but that a Conley deal could be trickier.