Much has been said about the emotional toll the Deron Williams trade has brought upon Jazz fans.  Much has been written on the cause of it.  Much has been hypothesized with “what ifs”.  I would like to touch on none of that today and look at the Jazz state of affairs as it stands right now.  Where are the Jazz now and where are they going from here?

Overpriced Groceries

Many people were frustrated that the Jazz didn’t trade away Kirilenko’s albatross contract for a SG or Millsap for a capable wing.  Why would they do that?  They don’t know what this team is yet.

When I lived out in the middle of nowhere Montana I had two options for groceries.  You could get groceries at the tiny grocery store in town and pay double what those groceries were worth for the convenience of not having to drive out of town, or you could make the hour drive for less expensive groceries and get a way better value for what you paid.  If the Jazz would have traded for a SG using Kirilenko’s contract odds are they would have had to take at least 75% or more  of his contract’s value back in salaries.  Guaranteed most of those players’ salaries would not be expiring contracts.  The Jazz would have been paying for overpriced groceries.

Do you really want to pay $18 for milk?

The Jazz have a chance in the next two drafts to select at least two guys from the lottery slots.  On top of that they have a chance to select four players from the lottery slots. FOUR!  What teams have four lottery picks in the next two drafts?  Here’s another thing to think about: how many teams will have had 6 lottery picks from 2010-2012? 1.  If the cards fall right the Jazz will end up drafting six times in the lottery in 3 drafts.  The Jazz currently have Favors & Hayward, two possible in this draft, and two possible in 2012 draft.  Let that melt over you like a warm butter.

A Billion Dollars Cool

There’s a scene in The Social Network where Mark Zuckerberg and his friend Eduardo are speaking with Sean Parker. Mark’s best friend Eduardo has been trying for weeks to convince Mark that they need advertising on this site to become profitable.  Then there is this exchange in the movie:

Eduardo Saverin: “You know what, settle an argument for us. I’d say its time to start making money from theFacebook but Mark doesn’t want advertising. Who’s right?”
Sean Parker: “Neither of you, yet. TheFacebook is cool. That’s what it’s got going for it.”
Mark Zuckerberg: “Yeah.”
Sean Parker: “You don’t want to ruin it with ads because ads aren’t cool.”
Mark Zuckerberg: “Exactly.”
Sean Parker: “It’s like you’re throwing the greatest party on campus and someone saying it’s gotta be over by eleven.”
Mark Zuckerberg: “That’s exactly right.”
Sean Parker: “You don’t even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?”
Eduardo Saverin [giving evidence at the deposition]: “A billion dollars. And that’s what shut everybody up.”

To have compromised future cap flexibility for something that limits your progress in the future like bad contracts (which is what the Jazz would have received back to complete AK trade) would have been “throwing the greatest party on campus and someone saying it’s gotta be over by eleven.”  Just to get a guy who is a proven commodity they would have had to give up future cap flexibility and take on a lot of salary.

The Jazz don’t even know what the Jazz are.  Are they a PF-driven team?  A Center-led team? If they draft Irving are they PG-driven? If they draft Barnes would they be SG-driven?  To compromise all that flexibility now would be taking their chips down.

If Favors was stock he'd be Apple pre-iPod. Buy now.

Right now the Jazz have something going for them.  They have a future.  With Deron Williams that future had the potential of ending in a disastrous way if he were to leave via free agency.  The Jazz traded him for two players, Devin Harris and Derrick Favors, and 2 1st round draft picks. Those 2 1st round draft picks will most likely be lottery picks. Then in the next draft they will have 2 more lottery picks.  They also have Ante Tomic in Europe who would be a mid to late 1st round pick if he were to enter the draft now.  There’s a lot to be excited about.

As Sean Parker said, “You don’t even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?  A Billion Dollars.”

People may have mocked the Jazz for trading Deron Williams now but do you remember what Eduardo said after Sean Parker made that remark?

“And that’s what shut everybody up.”

In 1990 the British band Go West came out with the song “King of Wishful Thinking.” It is equal parts catchy and annoying. Check out the lyrics and you might see some similarities with the Utah Jazz situation right now. Anyway, in the interest of getting over Deron Williams I want to provide the extreme optimistic view on the trade.

• Devin Harris - Will be 85% the point guard of Deron Williams at 50% the cost. This will provide the Jazz with a solid point guard and financial flexibility.
• Nets 1st round draft pick 2011- Right now the Jazz have a 6.3% chance of winning the 1st pick. In an ideal world the Nets will keep losing and the Jazz will end up with a top 3 pick that they use on Kyrie Irving. Irving then becomes a superstar point guard.
• Warriors 1st round pick 2012- In this scenario the Jazz are set at point guard (Irving and Harris), power forward (Millsap and Favors) and center (Jefferson and Okur). They Jazz would use this probable late lottery pick on a dynamic wing. This wing player will be combined with a Hayward for a young, productive nucleus at shooting guard/small forward.
• Derrick Favors - This is the ultimate stretch, but stay with me for a second. Not many NBA players were really good at 19 years old. Favors was a highly regarded high school prospect (#3 according to rivals) and a highly drafted prospect (3rd pick last year). He has been relatively productive (WS/48 of 0.9) in limited minutes with the Nets. He is a good rebounder and shoots a high percentage. There are obvious faults (outside shooting and passing ability are the primary ones I see), but again he is only 19 years old and from all indications has a ton of talent. Now I know this isn’t fair and I am certainly not making any predictions based on this, but check out the comparasion between Derrick Favors rookie year and Kevin Garnett’s rookie year. Both were high draft picks, who played the post on terrible teams. 

I decided to compare Favors as a 19 year old with other highly drafted post players to see how his numbers compared to other players numbers as either a 19 year old, a rookie or both. Below is the comparisonof the advanced stats with the numbers highlighted in green being better than Favors and the red numbers being worse than Favors. The stronger the color determines the degree of difference. If the cell is not highlighted then the numbers are very similar to Favors current numbers:

The summary is that it doesn’t look like Favors is going to be a bust like Darko, Curry, or Kwame Brown. However, the flip side is that I wouldn’t bet on Favors being as productive as Love or Howard. Since I am being optimistic though I decided to focus on the remarkable similarities in offensive rating, defensive rating and WS/48 between KG and Favors.

Anyway, the goal of this post is to provide optimism to the Jazz fans that might be spending too much time refreshing Chad Ford’s mock draft lottery. The draft is four months away and it is looking more and more likely that June 23rd is going to be an important day for the Jazz organization.

My first impressions of the trade of Deron Williams to the Nets for Derrick Favors, Devin Harris and two first round picks are below:

• First impression is positive. The Jazz couldn’t afford to be “Lebroned” and to get what they did from the Nets looks to be a fair deal.
• Normally, I don’t like trading a quarter for two dimes, but I feel like all things consider Kevin O’Connor did a great job. My only regret is that he didn’t do this earlier in the year before the Jazz lost Coach Sloan.
• Can an organization known for its stability have a crazier few weeks than the Jazz?
• The Jazz are now a better defensive team. Deron Williams was an extremely talented offensive player, but defensively he had regressed. This was my own opinion from watching the Jazz play and the data on basketballvalue.com seems to support it considering the Jazz are 10.24 points per 100 possesion better when Deron Williams was off the court. Not that +/- is the end all be all, but it is worth noting that he was the worst Jazz defender based on that.
• The Jazz are going to go from a bad 3 point shooting team (34% is 21st in the league) to an even worse 3 point shooting team. Deron Williams is a career 35.8% three point shooter compared to Devin Harris’ 30% mark from behind the line. How is this going to affect their offense.
• Harris has been an above-average NBA point guard during his time in the league. As such he is paid as an above-average NBA point guard. His salary over the next 2.5 years is reasonable at $9.3M next year and $8.5M the following year.
• Derrick Favors will probably be the player that makes or breaks this trade. He is only 19 and is already a solid power forward. His WS/48 is 0.09, which is right below the average NBA player of 0.10. In the immediate future he should help the Jazz with their rebounding considering his TRB% of 16.2% would be the highest on the Jazz team. In the long term his rookie contract is very favorable to the Jazz considering the natural progression one should expect from a 19 year old forward.
• I like the Jazz getting depth on the front court to match up with teams like the Lakers. Of course this comes at the expense of their backcourt. I really wished a Jazz trade would bring along a shooting guard who was at least average. Raja Bell’s time as a starter in this league should be coming to an end.
• A lot of this trade will depend on the 1st round picks the Jazz get. Will they be high and will the team actually make any good picks? If those picks turn into Morris Almond and Kosta Koufus 2.0 then that will obviously be a disappointment.

Overall I am pleased and wish Deron Williams well in New Jersey. He played well for the Jazz for 5.5 years and even with the Sloan situation he was a great draft pick for the team. Of course I think it can now definitely be written that the Jazz should have drafted Chris Paul.

Anyway, those are my quick thoughts on this trade. Any other thoughts?

The Jazz season has taken a sudden turn for the worse. An icon has left the team and the short and long term outlook looks to be very negative. The pessimism from Jazz fans has reached a point that it kind of reminds me of the state of the Jazz entering the 2003-2004 season. Following a 1st round exit, John Stockton retired and Karl Malone left to go to the LA Lakers. The outlook was bleak. To give you a comparison the Jazz going into the 2003-2004 season weren’t thought of much differently than this year’s Cleveland Cavaliers. 

Somehow Jerry Sloan was able to work his magic and help that team win 42 games. The fact that the Jazz almost made the playoffs was as close to a miracle as you can see in the NBA. Let’s consider some of the facts:

• The offense on that team was dreadful considering their eFG% of 45.6% (23^rd in the league) and offensive efficiency of 83 points per 100 possessions (24^th in the league) are two of the worst stats you will see for a Jazz team.
• The following players were the top eight in terms of minutes played; Andrei Kirilenko, Greg Ostertag, Raja Bell, Carlos Arroyo, Jarron Collins, Raul Lopez, DeShawn Stevenson and Sasha Pavlovic.
• The three highest players were Ostertag, Glen Rice and Keon Clark..

Besides Jerry Sloan (who should have won the Coach of the Year award that year) the main reason the Jazz weren’t the 2010/2011 Cavs was Andrei Kirilenko. In contrast to Malone or Stockton, who thrived with predictability and order , AK47 was one of those players who excelled in chaos. When a play broke down or something unexpected happened, Kirilenko always seemed to be there with a steal, block, assist or dunk.  He finished the 2003-2004 season as one of the best players in the league. He was 5^th overall in Win Shares, 13^th in WS/48, 7^th in steal %, 5^th in block %, 8^th in PER and he did this all while playing the most minutes of his career. Also, in terms of a value in the NBA it doesn’t get much better than paying $955K for 11.6 wins. 

On October 30th, 2004 the Jazz rewarded Kirilenko with a max contract worth $86 million over 6 years. By doing this the Jazz were signaling the post-Stockton/Malone era was going to be led by Kirilenko. They are still paying for that mistake. They are still carrying that albatross.

In fairness to the Jazz the mistake didn’t seem like a poor decision at the time. At the time he was young, productive and someone who looked to be getting better. Right after he signed the contract Bill Simmons rated him 13th in his trade value column. Below is what he wrote at the time about Kirilenko:

He’s only 23 … made $955,000 last season … already the second-best defensive player alive (behind Ben Wallace, ahead of Ron Artest) … perfectly capable of creating his own offense, although he’s too unselfish to do it … put up rotolines of “19-5-7-8-5″ and “10-12-6-6-5″ in the span of eight days last December … grabbed a starting spot on the annual “Guys Who Would Just Be Plain Fun To Play With” team, along with Yao, Luke Walton, Brent Barry and 11-time MVP Jason Kidd … and he looks like a cross between Fred Roberts and Ivan Drago.

However, he been in a constant decline ever since he signed that contract to the point that he is now the 4th best player on the team. Just looking at Bill Simmons trade columns he went down from 13th to 15th to 29th to 56th to one of the worst contracts. He is still a productive player, but he is no where near being worth being the 6th highest paid player in the NBA. Below are two graphs that show that while his salary increased tremendously his productivity has actually declined.

This albatross has had a real impact on the Jazz roster, because talented players have left or been traded away because the Jazz could afford them. Below is a list of the players that left primarily because of money concerns:

• Mo Williams? Went from making $366K to $1.8M from the Bucks. Would the Jazz have signed him if they hadn’t signed Kirilenko?
• Eric Maynor -The only reason Maynor was traded was because the Jazz were over the luxury tax and the Thunder agreed to take Matt Harpring’s contract. The team wouldn’t have had to do that if Kirilenko had never been signed to his current deal. I would much rather have Maynor than Earl Watson or Ronnie Price.
• Kyle Korver – The 3 year – $15 million contract wasn’t unreasonable for a player like Korver, but it seemed like the Jazz didn’t even consider bringing him back. Would they have considered it if they had had some additional room left under the salary cap? A career 41% three point shooter, who also doubled as free throw closer is worth $5 million a year.
• Ronnie Brewer - Why did the Jazz sign Raja Bell over Brewer? The salary difference wasn’t that much, so maybe including Brewer in this discussion is unfair. Regardless, the Jazz did trade Brewer to the Grizzlies because of the luxury tax. The outcome of this was a negative reaction from Deron Williams and a smaller chance of winning in the 2010 playoffs. Also, the trade gave more playing time to the last player on this list. This helped drive up his market value and ultimately led to the Jazz losing both Brewer and his replacement.
• Carlos Boozer – Despite his shortcomings, Carlos Boozer is a better player than Al Jefferson. Check out their stats next to each other if you don’t believe me. No matter what John Hollinger wrote in the preseason, I think it is clear the Jazz are a better team with Boozer as opposed to Jefferson. Would the Jazz have signed Boozer and not traded for Jefferson if they didn’t have to worry about Kirilenko? They might have decided against keeping Boozer, but it would at least have been an option. Also, an option would have been keeping the player below.
• Wesley Matthews – This is one that really hurts considering the Jazz situation at shooting guard. Raja Bell and C.J. Miles continue to be below-average options, while Wesley Matthews has played well in Portland. The Jazz passed on a Matthews contract partly because of the luxury tax penalties they would have incurred because of Kirilenko.

Now the real unfortunate thing might not be the signing of the contract or even the decline of his play. The worst part of this entire story might have been the out the Jazz were given in September 2007. Kirilenko asked to be let out of his contract. This was a get out of jail free card for the Jazz. They should have done whatever it took to honor his request and voided his contract. It would have been the best thing for both the Jazz (who were paying too much for what they were getting) and Kirilenko (who would have been more happy in Russia). That is the point in time I wish the Jazz organization could go back in time and try again.

In the meantime as a Jazz fan I am glad that there are only a few more months left of paying a max contract to Andrei Kirilenko.

For the longest time I have been a Jazz fan and being a Jazz fan over the past 23 years means that I have been watching a Jerry Sloan coached team. Today, Jerry Sloan announced he was resigning as head coach of the Jazz. There will be ample time to get into the reasons why, but for now I would just like to focus on the amazing, unprecedented career for Coach Sloan. In my life there has been no other comparison.

Around the time I was born in 1983, Coach Sloan started off as Scout Sloan with the Utah Jazz. He later transitioned to the role of assistant coach and by the time I was ready to enter kindergarten he had taken over as head coach of the Jazz from Frank Layden. He was successful from the start as he led the Jazz to a 55-27 record in his first full year as the head coach.  He was consistently good to the point that I went from being a kindergartener to a sophomore in college without ever seeing the Jazz miss the playoffs. Think about that. My life changed in immeasurable ways, but one thing that was constant was watching Jerry Sloan lead the Jazz to the playoffs.

When John Stockton retired and Karl Malone left, many thought that this was going to be the end of the line. Things really bottomed out by the time I was graduating college as the Jazz finished a 26-56 season. They then drafted a point guard prospect out of Coach Sloan’s home state of Illinois named Deron Williams. Pairing Williams with free agents Mehmet Okur and Carlos Boozer paid dividends almost immediately. By the time I was really feeling comfortable working in corporate America, Coach Sloan had led the Jazz back to the Western Conference Finals.

It is amazing to think of how long Coach Sloan has been the head coach of the Jazz. There have been 245 coaching changes in the NBA since he became the head coach of the Jazz. There has been two trips to the NBA Finals. There have been 1,127 regular season wins. There has been a changing of the guard from Stockton/Malone to Williams/Boozer. There have been inventions in technology that have changed the world with the added side bonus of allowing people like me to share their thoughts on blogs like this. There are many, many ways to slice and dice the ways things have changed since he started. For me it comes down to the fact that you can chart certain milestones in my life with the career of Coach Sloan.

Thank you Coach Sloan for being a Hall of Fame coach for the Jazz. You will be missed.