Jazz fans, there’s no sense dwelling on the past or on what might have been, as you suffer through The Rebuild, Phases I and II.
But let’s do it anyway.
The Jazz could put a very good team on the floor with the players they traded away the last two to three years.
Oh, wait, they did put a very good team on the floor two to three years ago.
Six straight playoff teams.
Best record in the NBA in 2021.
Then Danny Ainge blew up the roster in 2022. He traded all the team’s best players — basically, anyone with a résumé who could win games — to collect 11 first-round draft picks. It was a burn-the-boats move for the future. No going back.
In other words, the Jazz decided to tank.
The problem was that, while the Jazz were qualifying for the playoffs for six straight years, they checked out of them in the first or second round. That might be good enough for some, but not for Ainge. Apparently, he’s thinking: go big or go home (or, in this case, to another team).
Ainge burned some more boats in February when he traded three more of the team’s better players and added two more first-round draft picks to his collection. He is playing the long game.
So the Jazz have started over, and here they are — 11th in the Western Conference standings (12th last year) and headed for another losing season. Meanwhile, the castoffs have landed on playoff-contending teams.
If the Jazz were to build a lineup with Jazz castoffs, this is what it would look like (just to rub salt in the wound):
Center — Rudy Gobert, Timberwolves. The Wolves went all-in on Gobert when they acquired him from the Jazz, giving up five players, four first-round draft picks and a first-round swap, not to mention taking on the guaranteed five-year $205 million contract extension he had signed with the Jazz before the 2020-21 season — the third biggest in NBA history. The three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year is averaging 13.7 points and a team-leading 12.7 rebounds per game to help his team climb to first place in the Western Conference. In the NBA’s advanced metrics standings, he ranks sixth in defensive rating, eighth in effective field goal percentage, ninth in true shooting percentage and fifth in rebound percentage. Not that the Jazz could use any help in those areas (sarcasm alert: they rank 29th in rebounding).
Guard — Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers. He’s averaging a career-high 28.1 points per game, which ranks fourth in the NBA. He also leads his team in assists (6.2), steals (1.9) and minutes played (35.5) and is third in rebounding (5.4) for the Cavs, the second-place team in the Eastern Conference standings. In advanced metrics, he ranks among the top 10 in player impact estimate, defensive rating, net rating, usage percentage, advanced metrics, as well as third in assist ratio and second in assist-turnover rating (bonus points if you can tell the audience what half those metrics mean). The Jazz were going to build the team around Mitchell when they made him the 13th overall pick of the 2017 draft, but that lasted only five and a half seasons. He is pretty much doing for the Cavs what he did for the Jazz, but with a new address.
Guard — Mike Conley, Timberwolves. He’s another Jazz castoff who landed on his feet with the front-running Timberwolves. At 36, now in his 17th season, he reportedly has been offered a two-year contract extension that will take him through the 2025-26 season. In his first full season with the Wolves, he has started 53 games and averages 28.7 minutes, 10.7 points and a team-high 6.2 assists per game.
Forward — Bojan Bogdanovic, Knicks. After two years with the Pistons (in which he averaged 21.2 points per game), he escaped a sinking ship when he was traded to the playoff-contending Knicks this winter. Bogdanovic has logged 13 professional seasons, 10 of them in the NBA, where he has averaged 15.8 points. He will turn 35 soon.
Forward — Royce O’Neale, Suns. A few weeks ago, the Nets traded O’Neale to the Suns, who are sixth in the Western Conference standings. He has played in 55 games this season and averaged 24.6 minutes, 7.6 points and 4.7 rebounds. In the Suns’ victory over the Lakers earlier this week, the former Jazzman logged 37 minutes, hit six 3-pointers and grabbed nine rebounds.
Forward-Guard — Joe Ingles, Magic. Now in his 10th year, the 36-year-old is playing for his third team in three seasons. After averaging 6.9 points and 22.7 minutes per game for the Bucks last season, he’s scoring 4.8 points for the Magic this season and playing about 17 minutes per game. The Magic sit eighth in the Eastern Conference standings. The eight years Ingles played for Utah were easily the best of his career.
That completes the Jazz Class of 2022. If you reach back and throw in other past Jazz players, you can add some depth to the team: Grayson Allen, who sports the highest 3-point field goal percentage in the league by far (48.6), is playing for his third team in five years since leaving Utah and averaging 13 points for the Suns; Alec Burks, who was traded from the Pistons to the Knicks along with Bogdanovic, is playing for his seventh team in 13 years — some more than once — and has a career average of 10.9 points per game.
Add in this year’s trades that sent Simone Fontecchio, Kelly Olynyk and Ochai Agbaji elsewhere, and you have nearly a full roster.
But there’s no sense in dwelling on the past or what might have been.
