This is the next installment of PBT’s series of “What your team should do when the lockout ends.” Today it’s the Utah Jazz. You can also read up on the Lakers, Timberwolves and Mavericks as we start to work our way through all 30 NBA teams.
Last Season: Okay, imagine the shiniest, fastest train you can. All new. Shiny, polished black metal. Sterling silver ornaments. Leather cushions for the passengers and a fondue bar. Now imagine that train speeding off the rails, slamming into the side of a cliff, then plummeting thousands of feet to a fiery explosion. Now imagine out of that wreckage a train that looks like the charred remains only with some nice pieces that don’t really fit stuck on. You now have the story of the 2010-2011 Utah Jazz season.
The Jazz finished 39-43 last year, after starting 22-11. They beat the Heat. Sure, there were cracks in the windshield. But the car was on the road. Then the calendar hit January 1st and all hell broke loose. The wheels came off, the team started blaming each other, tthen all of a sudden, Jerry Sloan, coach for a quarter century just up and retires. Williams is traded a few weeks later for a huge package of assets and the team went into rebuilding mode.
So yeah, a busy, if not awesome, year for Jazz fans.
Changes since we last saw the Jazz: They added a combo big. I’m not kidding. The team with Mehmet Okur, Derrick Favors, Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson drafted Enes Kanter. The jokes write themselves, really. They’re going to need to make more room in the locker room at this pace. And they didn’t move anyone on draft night. It’s perplexing. They managed to sneak in Alec Burks, which was a steal. But Kanter showed a lot of question marks in Euro play over the summer. It’s hard to tell how that one’s going to work out, if at all, in the short-term, and they still have the logjam.
When the lockout ends, the Jazz need to: Make some sort of sense out of their roster? Devin Harris is more valuable as a trade chip than as a starting point guard, but he’s more than serviceable at point. Burks covers for the liability Raja Bell was last year, even if Bell will need to return to prior years’ defensive strength while Burks covered his offense. But then everything gets nuts. Andrei Kirilenko’s contract expired and it’s been widely suggested that Kirilenko will return for a lesser deal. But his value is questionable on a consistent basis. So then you get into the umpteen combo forwards the Jazz have. They need to figure out some roles and discern who goes and who stays. They all have value on the market, but they need to figure out which ones they want long-term.
From there a longterm plan to establish or acquire a true superstar is probably key. Gordon Hayward could be it. Favors might be one. Burks might be one. Kanter might be one... eventually. Jefferson could potentially be one in the right situation. But right now the Jazz are kind of like an omellette that has been broken and isn’t cooked evenly. There are a lot of ingredients but there’s no sense of an actual dish there.
The good news is that they pulled in enough assets in the trade to make the move they want... once they figure out what that is.