One Month from the Draft: Downbeat #1917

Welcome to another week, the Thunder continue to surprise another juggernaut, the Jazz continue to enjoy their time off, and the draft is right around the corner!

The draft is exactly a month from now. After the first lottery in many years to not have any team change positions in the lotto, the Jazz draft in the same 12th slot as last year.

Will they draft another player of the caliber as Trey Lyles? Better? Worse?

Here's a current mock of the draft of the first round by NBADraft.net

Furkan Korkmaz has been linked to the Jazz in a few mock drafts that I've looked at so far.

Is this people projecting that the Jazz are more likely to draft internationally?

Furkan's NBA comparison on NBADraft.net: Gordon Hayward, go ahead and chew on that for a while.

Who are you hoping for the Jazz snatch in the 12th slot this year? Or are you hoping the Jazz trade their pick?.

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Will the Jazz end up on the Korkmaz train?

Have a look at a DraftExpress breakdown of his strengths and decide for yourself if you think he is a good fit for this team going forward.

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With Gordon Hayward hitting free agency next year, crescendoing murmurs are emerging wondering if the current Jazz core closer to their peak (aka Hayward, Favors, Burks, Gobert) will be a sustainable force in the playoff years to come or if the inevitable crossroads of free agency that many of them will face in the not so distant future will force our front office's hand of starting to focus on solely the long road of our fresher core (aka Exum, Hood, Lyles, this year's #12 pick, 1 or 2 of our older core who we can manage to keep). (Also of note, you're welcome for that classic copyrighted JuMu run-on sentence!)

It's not the most clear cut situation. Many of our older veteran players are still on the right end of 27, so there's clearly motivation to not have another Paul Millsap situation happen. An all-star level player who still has many years of their prime left should not be allowed to walk in free agency on the cheap. The Jazz could have easily gave out a 2 year $9.5 Mill/year contract or even gave out a 4 year to him. I'm sure we could have used him greatly this season. Having a young Kanter and Favors on the team complicated things but still we let a top 30 player walk for nothing!

Anyways, rant over for now.

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Our likely biggest acquisition compared to last year's roster will likely be in the form of a healthy Dante Exum (that's right, if the Jazz talking heads can say things like this, I'm going to resort to them too).

Watch and salivate:

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With may of the top teams of the NBA opting for strangely effective small-ball lineups, will the Jazz's strategy of finally finding players who would counter the super tall Lakers of 2008-2010 who knocked us out 3 straight season change focus? Will we find some stretch bigs or more positionless players to bolster this team? Is it a moot point anyways because it's simply a superstar league anyway, and if you don't have one, tough luck?

Let me know what you all think?

Have a great week, everyone!