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At last season’s deadline, the Jazz dashed their own playoff dreams by cutting prized point guard Mike Conley. They were 27-29 at the time of the trade and were 10-16 the rest of the way.
It was the right way to end the campaign. Rather than jostling for a tournament ticket, they instead embraced the race to the bottom and ended up holding on to the protected top 10 they owed to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Utah should take a similar approach at this deadline, largely because it still owes OKC this pick (with the same top-10 protection). Plus, the Jazz are nowhere near being able to make the playoffs, so it’s not like they’ll deny this core some playoff experience. Even if they wanted to go for it, they might just find they don’t have enough to hang on in this deep Western Conference.
And that’s very good. Despite what it showed last season, this team is still in the early stages of its rebuild. While he could ramp things up faster than others thanks to an impact talent like Lauri Markkanen, he needs more help for this club to truly climb the standings. The Jazz should continue to look to the draft to find him. Their future already looks brighter thanks to the play of rookie goaltender Keyonte George.
Utah should continue to stockpile picks, however, especially since it has several players that could interest winning buyers. Between Jordan Clarkson, Kelly Olynyk, John Collins, Collin Sexton and Talen Horton-Tucker, the Jazz have plenty of players to attract offense-seeking buyers, and they should explore all of those opportunities, improving their draft lottery chances .
Zach Buckley covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on @ZachBuckleyNBA.
