The Jazz‘s deadline trades will thrust lottery pick Taylor Hendricks into a larger role, according to Sarah Todd of The Deseret News.
With Kelly Olynyk, Simone Fontecchio, and Ochai Agbaji no longer on the roster, the Jazz will take a longer look at their young players. Hendricks, who has appeared in 14 games off the bench, tops the list. He played 18 minutes against Phoenix on Thursday.
“Taylor’s life is very different now,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. “Taylor is going to be a part of our rotation. He’s going to be playing every night. How much he plays every night will be determined by how well he plays.”
We have more from the Northwest Division:
- Jazz general manager Justin Zanik went into detail about the team’s future plans and why they made those trades during a post-deadline press conference. Zanik laid out his reasoning for dealing the above-mentioned trio. “Two of those guys were going to be free agents. Maybe we bring them back, maybe not,” he said, per Andy Larsen of the Salt Lake City Tribune. “We didn’t trade anybody of our core. We traded one starter who has started during our run that started basically half the year. The other two were rotation players. Last year, we traded three starters. This is the second kind of calibration around our core, and sometimes that takes time. I wish that it was quick and then all of a sudden we have a long and prosperous run right now. We’ll do that in a second. It’s just not available.”
- The Thunder added veteran big man Bismack Biyombo after the Grizzlies waived him. He’ll play a situational role, Joe Mussatto of The Oklahoman writes. Biyombo will basically be used as insurance and add some size and rebounding when needed.
- The Thunder also made another personnel move after the deadline, promoting Lindy Waters from two-way status to a standard deal. According to Michael Scotto of Hoops Hype (Twitter link), Waters inked a two-year deal, which is fully guaranteed for the rest of this season and includes a team option for next season.
The Jazz FO rushing out with management BS platitudes in order to exert damage control after even Markkanen showed signs of frustration in a recent interview.
Their so-called “calibrating”, i.e. kneecapping the team at the trade deadline for the second season in a row, is only the prelude to a protracted tank job that will last at least a few more years. By that time, Ainge will trade the expiring contracts of Utah’s 2023/24 rookies for more draft picks in the far future.
Gullible Jazz fans like to bring up Danny Boy’s success with the Celtics in order to convince themselves of the current wrecking job’s necessity. But small market SLC isn’t Boston.
The team, which owner Ryan Smith and his stooge Ainge destroyed, had the best record in the West. They blew it up under the pretext of a disappointing playoff run, something that can happen even to very good teams. If it was really about winning, they’d have made some adjustments and tried again next season. But that would have cut into Smith’s profits. Stringing the fans along with FO mumbo-jumbo while making bank is a lot more fun.
Agree w almost everything you said
Q – What level of resentment, even unfounded, do they hold silently towards Will Hardy for being such a badass and actually winning games with whatever slop ingredients the higher up’s have given him to cook with !
They don’t need to tank. They need to beat everyone that they have acquired picks from. I don’t understand tanking for your own single pick when they have a ton of capital left over from previous trades. They retooled. And of they had a set team full of vets that you know a lot about then you make trades to add to that. Wrong arc.
In Football you trade your QB when you find out he folds in the big game. And why wouldn’t you take 5 first round picks for Goober? Spida and the microphone licker didn’t work. Plain and simple. It’s not personal. Goober is having a decent season… Spida too. But neither have a ring yet
You’re skipping over an entire year to make your point. Lots of frustration and a total meltdown in the final playoff appearance of that group.
The Jazz had no flexibility to improve. They could only find minor trades up until that point. They also realized this team wasn’t built for a long playoff run. Had a big glaring weakness that could be exploited.
However, how it all happened wasn’t planned. They got the huge offers and had to accept. They were planning on keeping Donovan, but that changed when his offers then trade came through.
The last two seasons have been about figuring out what kind of team Coach Hardy wanted. That and waiting for the trades for their veterans. They needed to get it down to a young team on the sand timeline.
Now, after trading Clarkson this Summer, they can finally work on building the team through draft picks and eventually trades for stars.
They’ve said they want to build a championship team that wins for a long time. Going for just the play-in this year wasn’t the goal, but would be nice.
In other words, they want to keep and maintain a winning culture. They never wanted to bottom out and create bad habits.
Utah Jazz fans won’t tolerate losing, even for a short time. They’ll support them no matter what, but they’ll definitely pressure them to win every game. GM Zanik said that was the goal. They want to win every game.
That’s very different then the pessimistic view your anxiety created above. It’ll be okay. =)
Understand the frustration as it all really started with trading conley. Made no sense to trade Mike to the wolves so we just barely miss the playoffs and the wolves just barely make it in because we helped them.
The reality is the FO doesn’t care about the short term like we do.
This trade deadline made sense because ochai just wasn’t developing as expected. Would have loved to have kept him for another year for sure but the stats don’t lie.
Ko and the Fons were essentially gone and so it makes sense to get some draft capital and cap space for summer deals.
The Fons was a key contributor and was a restricted agent. We could have matched the pistons offers but now we have to make offers that are ridiculous to get him back. In other words, the Fons is getting paid either way.
Jazz made the right moves but never finished ✅ adding another core piece for today like Murray.
“This trade deadline made sense because ochai just wasn’t developing as expected.”
Agbaji was the 2023 14th overall pick and played his second NBA season on an ill-constructed tanking team with frequent chaotic lineup changes. If writing him off after such a short period of time represents the Jazz FO’s method of talent development, then there’s a high possibility that Hendricks (2024 9th overall) and/or Sensabaugh (2024 28th overall) will be traded a year from now, too. Their current development certainly lags far behind Agbaji’s at a similar point in his career.
A FO sabotaging their teams for years, thereby creating a losing culture among players, but then magically making all the right picks in upcoming drafts to catapult the franchise into perennial title contention, are management fairy tales for the gullible sheep. It doesn’t work that way, especially not in SLC.
What’s your background with this team or Danny Ainge? You sound bitter.
And no, they’ve always said they wanted to keep a winning culture and keep good habits, not create bad ones.
Ochai played solid defense, but his offense had been off since Summer League. He was too much in his own head. He was too anxious all the time. The Jazz traded him cuz they didn’t see that changing anytime soon.