Zig just a little

by Basketball John on May 27, 2009 6:00 AM MDT

If you look up stability on Wikipedia, you'll find the Utah Jazz - unless someone has removed it. In that case, you'll find it here.

20 consecutive years of making the playoffs, 20+ years of Jerry Sloan, Stockton and Malone, etc.

As a small market team, the Jazz have needed that stability to survive. They really can't afford to take too many chances. Can you imagine if Isiah Thomas or or Chris Wallace had been running this team?

The philosophy during the S2M years was to get a very good third piece to the team, and then fill in the cracks with role players. It worked well for a long time but as you painfully know, it never got them the title.

After #12 retired and #32 became #11, the Jazz officially went into rebuilding mode. Through some pretty good drafting and free agenct signings, they were back in the playoffs in just 3 years. Not bad after losing two Hall of Famers. Other teams in larger cities drop out of the playoffs and aren't heard from again for a decade.

In Gordon Monson's latest column on the Jazz, he goes over Kevin O'Connor's off-seasons with the Jazz. He describes him as cautious. I think he's had to be. With the exception of the Boozer and Okur signings, he really hasn't made any big moves.

My quick breakdown of the off-seasons since 2003:

2003 - Drafted Sasha P and Mo Williams. Pretty decent. Not too many drafted below them that you might have preferred. They both left though. While Sasha would be an okay player, Mo has turned into an All-Star. KOC gets static over letting him go, but if he had stayed, we likely wouldn't have the other Williams. Maybe we don't even have Mo now because he left for free agency. It's easy to talk about both of those things now of course. Also got the 2010 Knicks pick. Solid B+.
2004 - Drafted now-felon Kirk Snyder and non-felon Kris Humphries. Could have had Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, JR Smith, and a few others. This was his first lottery pick draft. He also signed AK to his huge deal.

Here's the thing with AK's deal: The only way you're going to get free agents to come to Utah is to either move Salt Lake City closer to Las Vegas or throw a whole bunch of money at them. AK was the team's only star at that point. They didn't know if they were going to be able to have another good/great player for a long time. They did what they had to do to keep him. He was going to be the cornerstone of the franchise. Andrei would have been dumb to turn it down.

They also signed Booze and Memo to huge deals by throwing all of their available cash to them.
2005 - Thanks to injuries, the Jazz finish near the bottom and end up with the 6th pick in the draft. In probably his best move to date, KOC trades the 6th pick and another to the Blazers for the 3rd. This of course lands us Deron Williams.
2006 - Drafted Ronnie B and Paul Millsap. I would say those have turned out quite nicely. This also starts the year where the Jazz finally have their core and they start the stability formula again and begin adding the role players by trading for Fisher
2007 - Drafted Morris Almond and get Fesenko. These two have really never been given a chance to see what they can do so we'll have to wait a few years to grade this draft.
2008 - Kosta Koufos drafted. It's still way early here too, but he looks like he's going to be at least a solid contributor.

Overall, I think KOC's done a good job. When you're trying to lure free agents to Utah and picking consistently in the 20s, you've got your work cut out for you.

This post has been like a SLC to Vegas trip with a stop in Miami. But here's what I was bringing up all of this stability thing for...

After it was known that Utah and Phoenix had discussed trading Shawn Marion for Andrei, Larry Miller spoke with Locke about the talks. Basically, the trade never happened because the Jazz preferred the stability of AK's four remaining years on his contract versus the 2 that were left on Marion's. They would rather know who was going to be on the team than to have someone's status up in the air.

The question for me is, how much has that stability cost us now? Let's take a look at their stats for the last 2 seasons:

Can you tell who is who? The points and rebounds probably give it away. It's AK on the top.

So tell me if keeping AK the last two years versus trading for Marion has been a huge difference maker. It's hard to compare their stats because Marion has been more of a go-to guy on offense than Andrei. He's also logged a lot more minutes. But overall, I don't think having AK has been a either an advantage or disadvantage.

I wrote on my old site at the time that the trade needed to happen. Now that I think about it again, I'm a bit angry. In the name of stability we're probably in one of the most unstable times since the team moved to Utah. The AK/Marion trade should have happened.

They knew two years ago that Deron was going to be getting a max contract that would start next season. They knew that Booze and Memo could still be on the books. After Brewer's and Millsap's rookie seasons, they had to have known that at least one of them was going to need to get paid.

The trade would have sent AK/Giricek to PHX for Marion/Marcu Banks. Banks would have been a pricy backup PG, but he could have been moved again (like Miami did). Either way, his deal would have been a lot easier to handle right now.

Now we have up to 9 players that could be gone - although really only 3 or 4 are likely to not be in a Jazz uni next season.

With the news from new owner Greg Miller that the Jazz would be willing to venture into luxury tax territory if they needed to, maybe the team is going to start taking some limited gambles.

The team will always need that stability to ensure that it remains viable, but maybe we'll see a zig next time instead of a zag.

Poll

Using your 20/20 hindsight glasses, should AK have been traded in 2007 for Shawn Marion?

Yes

128 votes

No

54 votes

182 votes | Poll has closed

Tweet Comment 15 comments | 1 recs |

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Comments

I voted that the trade should have been made.

If you look at the teams that have won championships, or have challenged for the championship lately, they have all made big moves or taken big risks to pay off. We all agree that we would take one championship and other mediocre years over 10 years of championship contention without a tilte. But the Jazz need to make some moves.

Detroit of ’04 traded for Rasheed Wallace
Miami traded for Shaquille Oneal
Lakers traded for Pau Gasol and Ariza and Shannon Brown
Denver trade for Chauncey Billups
Cleveland traded for Mo Williams and Ben Wallace and almost for Shaquille Oneal
Orlando overpayed for Rashard Lewis who is singlehandedly killing opposing defenses

So that is one reason that I am actually against bringing back Okur AND Boozer, especially Boozer. If we do that, we will know what we are getting and that is a good team, that won’t win the championship. We need to take some risks and think outside of the box. Even if it means being mediocre for 1-3 years, if we can position ourselves to shoot for the stars, then the sky’s the limit to throw out some more cliches.

The more you try to erase me, the more that I appear.

by clarkpojo on May 27, 2009 6:24 AM MDT reply actions

I'm in the minority...

From my admittedly limited exposure to Shawn Marion, I just don’t see how his presence would have helped the Jazz much. His PPG and RPG stats are misleading. If he were playing in an offense that featured Okur, Williams and Boozer there’s no way he would be getting enough touches to score that much or enough opportunities to grab that many rebounds. He might be a better on-ball defender than AK is, but I don’t think that alone would have won us any championships. Just my $0.02.

Great read by the way. Rec’d.

by Patrick517 on May 27, 2009 11:59 AM MDT reply actions

I re-read what I wrote

And I didn’t bring out what I meant – shocking. My overall meaning was that whether we had AK or Marion, it probably wasn’t going to make that much of a difference. So in that case, I would have preferred to have had Marion simply so that his contract would be off the books and we wouldn’t have nearly the problem we have now.

I haven’t run the numbers on what we would be saving exactly, but I would wager it would be significant. Maybe if Locke is reading he can run them.

SLCDunk.com, The Utah Jazz on SBNation

by Basketball John on May 27, 2009 1:03 PM MDT up reply actions

I agree. Long term it would have saved us money and Marion is a little better from the 3 point line.

And the important thing is the money we would be saving. With AK off the books now, we would be able to probably re-sign Boozer, Okur, and Millsap and offer someone the mid-level exception, all without exceeding the cap.

We would have had to pay Marion $33 over his last two years and instead we paid AK $28 million over those two years and now have to pay him $34.2 million over the next two. So short term, we would have paid an extra $5 million, but long term we would have saved $29 million. I am now sad.

And I love Andrei, I really do, but even before the world fell on hard economic times, if you can trade a guy for a similar production guy and save money, you almost always need to do it.

The more you try to erase me, the more that I appear.

by clarkpojo on May 27, 2009 1:19 PM MDT up reply actions

I think it still depends

This is an interesting topic, and Its tough to me to evaluate the decision to not trade AK.

I answered no on the vote, because I got a feeling that the Jazz are going to really try and get their money’s worth with AK these next couple of years (Hence the Jazz wanting AK to bulk up). So, I’ll give AK the benefit of a doubt and say that he is really going to step it up and live up to that contract. I don’t see AK coming back with the Jazz after his contract is up, because by that time the Jazz need to be sure they have the money to re-sign you know who.

On a side note, the Lakers Trevor Ariza is a free agent after this year. If Boozer goes another direction, I think the Jazz have to make a serious push for him. I know lots of things can happen, but I really like how this line-up would look…

   G- Williams
   G- Ariza
   F- Brewer
   F- AK (Millsap could start)
  C- Okur

Reserves

  G- Price
  G- Korver (I’m assuming the Jazz find a way to keep him, along with Okur)
  F- Miles
  F- Millsap (or AK)
C – The Koof

I believe the Jazz can win with this lineup. How deep they go would depend on how well AK (could be Millsap if they decide to start him) are able to handle the 4. While they may not be able to put up boozer’s numbers offensively, they should be much better defensively.

As far as the first unit, I really would like to see Brew and Ariza on the same floor and how it would impact the Jazz defensively. Ariza is a much better shooter, and it would allow Brewer to play closer to the basket, which is where he is best.

If Millsap does happen to start, then AK would be the sixth man again.

by brock38 on May 27, 2009 4:33 PM MDT reply actions

Nice Idea but...

Can’t really work like that due to salary cap restrictions.

Ross Siler wrote a great blog post about it a week or so ago i think.

http://blogs.sltrib.com/jazz/2009/05/will-jazz-have-cap-space-with-opt-outs.htm

Basically if we keep Memo / Korver / Millsap we’re not going to be able to do much free agent wise. Ross says that if we don’t sign any of them (Boozer included obviously) then there will be about $8m to play with.

by sherbs on May 27, 2009 5:01 PM MDT up reply actions

Ariza is going no where

I love how everyone seems to believe Ariza is going to be signed elsewhere. He’s worth $5 million tops, and if you know Lakers history, they are more than willing to pay players $5 mil for what is essentially a $2 million dollar player.

Now I know someone will probably be stupid and offer Trevor $8 million and up (probably Detroit), and if that’s the case, they can have him. Trevor has talent, is a great spark, but he’s not worth taking up major cap space for a role player.

Besides, the Lakers have it all planned out. Kobe opts-out, takes a paycut, Lamar resigns at a pay cut, and the Lakers are able to resign Brown and Trevor (two players who have earned their way this postseason). Then, the Lakers will look for ways to trade non-key players, like Farmar and/or Vujacic.

by tandur on May 28, 2009 2:34 PM MDT up reply actions

And what if they don't win the championship this year? Are they still all going to be willing to take a pay cut?

Do these dreams go on when you close your eyes?

Boozer said he would return to the Jazz for $2 million a year and Okur is playing for free he said. So that we will have cap space to go after Ariza and Odom.

The more you try to erase me, the more that I appear.

by clarkpojo on May 28, 2009 2:55 PM MDT up reply actions

yep

those dreams always go on in Lakerland, where yearly success is the routine.

Just admit that your still sore that Malone betrayed you all and took a paycut to come play for the Evil Empire (not that it did them much good).

by tandur on May 28, 2009 3:36 PM MDT up reply actions

Unfortunately, I think we are in for a quieter off-season then we all would like to see.

More likely then anything, Boozer opts out, Okur and Korver stay, and the Jazz resign Millsap. On to next year. Second most likely is no one opts out, and the Jazz have to lose Millsap. Maybe things then would get interesting if that happened and they decide to try to move Boozer, but they probably wouldn’t. Even if they all opt out, they would resign Okur and Millsap and that would be about it. Good thing it doesn’t stop all the fun of us figuring out what they SHOULD do. Can anyone figure out how to turn Boozer, Okur, and Millsap into Bosh and Biedrins?

by Frank5 on May 28, 2009 12:40 AM MDT reply actions