It's Not Lame, it's The 10 Days of Christmas - On the seventh day of Christmas...

...the Utah Jazz gave to me... "No opt outs"

The Jazz had known for quite some time that there was a chance that everyone that was eligible to opt in would do exactly that.

But they had to be hoping that somebody would opt out so as to not have to face getting hit with the luxury tax. In fact, I believe Greg Miller went to KSL for an interview for the main purpose of trying to make sure that Boozer opted out. He spoke well of Okur and Millsap in that interview. He questioned Boozer though.

But one day after Korver announced that he would be back, both Memo and Booze announced that they too would be back.

Wow. I don't have any idea what Larry H Miller's reaction would have been had he been around to see this. We know that he was iffy on bringing CJ back at $4.7M per. He was adamant about not paying the luxury tax. I suppose though that he must have known that it would be a possibility.

They all came back for the same reason mostly. None of them were going to be given a raise with that poor market.

I believe Memo truly wanted to stay though. He followed up his opt-in with an extension. He always spoke fondly of living in Utah.

Korver I think didn't have too much of a preference other than he wanted to play for a contender. I think Deron probably helped sway him a bit into staying. We also know that he has a certain affection for a certain Dunker.

And Boozer was all about the cash. Nothing else. That's fine if that's why he wanted to stay but let's not pretend otherwise.

So here the Jazz were looking at a Knicks-like salary and not having a championship team. That's a lot of cash to pay for a second round exit in the playoffs.

I guess that makes the Hapring/Maynor trade today kind of timely. The biggest reason for that move was to dump salary. The Thunder weren't going to just do the Jazz a favor. Their payment was a young point guard who has shown a lot of promise. This kind of reminds me of when small market baseball teams get in over their heads and they look to the big market clubs like the Yankees to take their payroll mistake.

OKC made out like bandits because they were able to relieve the Jazz of some salary. They get Harp's expiring contract that has most of it paid by insurance. They also get a very cap-friendly deal in Eric Maynor that they'll control for the next 3 years.

It is a steep price to pay for the Jazz but something was going to have to happen when everyone opted in and the Jazz no longer controlled their fate.

Hopefully the Jazz have learned from this and it will better prepare them for contracts down the road.