The Downbeat #1936: Utah Jazz Odds of Winning Edition

Decided to try something a little different for today’s downbeat. It’s Draft Week so why not spice it up a little bit?

Draft Express released their most recent Mock Draft yesterday and it has the Utah Jazz selecting Wade Baldwin. If you’re keeping count at home that would be 4 point guards in 4 years of Utah Jazz drafting: Trey Burke, Raul Neto, Dante Exum, and Wade Baldwin. Now drafting for team need is very rarely, if it all, considered during the draft because no team wants to be the team that allows the next Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, or Paul George to slip by their team because they had too many shooting guards, big men, or what have you to pick the best available player.

Here’s the latest tape of Wade Baldwin.

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Somehow the Utah Jazz have lower odds of winning an NBA Title than the following teams:

New York Knicks

Minnesota Timberwolves

New Orleans Pelicans

Detroit Pistons

Washington Wizards

And the Utah Jazz have the same odds, 100/1, as the following teams:

Los Angeles Lakers

Denver Nuggets

Milwaukee Bucks

Sacramento Kings

Who are the only teams to have worse odds than the Utah Jazz of not winning a championship in 2017?

Orlando Magic

Philadelphia 76ers

Phoenix Suns

Brooklyn Nets

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Since the Utah Jazz can’t live in the future let’s live in the past, shall we?

Sporting News has the Utah Jazz as the 7th best team of all-time to never win a championship. I disagree because that team was leapfrogged by the San Antonio Spurs of this year, the 2008-2009 Cleveland Cavaliers (66-16), and the 2001-2002 Sacramento Kings (61-21). The only team that should be higher than Utah should be this year’s Golden State Warriors. If you want to see an all-time list that isn’t all-time and has severe recency bias here’s the link.

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One of the most annoying, if not the most annoying, aspects of ESPN’s coverage of the NBA across their programming has been their segment "First Take" which pits an over hyperbolic Stephen A. Smith vs hyperbolic Kaiju Skip Bayless. With annoying take after take of taking events way out of context in an effort to build up straw man theories. If ever you needed a master class in Fallacies, just watch "First Take", tape your eyes open, and enjoy the torture. They had it all from appealing to ignorance, attacking the person, circular arguments, red herrings, and Slippery Slopes.

With Skip Bayless’s transition to Fox Sports, it appears no one cares about protecting Skip Bayless’s TERRIBLE sports takes. Even pulling back the curtain on the miserable process of it. No other place has this been more evident than on Russillo & Kanell as Awful Broadcasting shows below:

Russillo: "Here’s my thing, If I had a position where I kept saying Tom Brady was the worst all the time and there’s really a lot of evidence that tells you he’s not the worst – or if I say Brady’s Super Bowl, you know, he could have done it without David Patten, that kind of stuff. If [Dan] LeBatard went out and said "I can’t believe Russillo said this, or Mike & Mike can’t believe Russillo said this, I would be OK with this, but I may disagree with them, but I would be OK with it. The problem is when you disagree with Skip, you’re not allowed to. Then he gets mad at you about it. So like, nobody wants to deal with it. And that’s why when the LeBron stuff comes up, if you’re going to be so clearly doctoring the results to keep pushing that you don’t like LeBron or you don’t think he’s any good, then go ahead and keep doing it because it’s clearly great for business, but you can’t get mad at other opinion people for being like ‘Well, that’s just insane and I don’t even know if you believe it.’ That’s always been my point with any of that stuff."

Kanell: "Isn’t there a time, where you have to go ‘I was wrong’. Isn’t there a time? It’s probably not after the NBA Finals when LeBron was just so dominant.

Russillo: But that’s not good for business. It’s not good for business. You’re right, Danny, but it’s not good for business. And do you know what? Business is good, so I respect that part of it, but we’re all big boys, we all say stuff, and all of us, since we’re opinion guys, disagree with each other all the time. But when you disagree with Skip, it’s handled a different way and a lot of us are just like, whatever. So that’s why we never bring it up.

Kanell: Well, we don’t have to worry about it anymore.

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The NBA Draft is in only two days. TWO. Two days away from drafting/trading for a new player. This is the first exciting part of the offseason. The best part of this time is in the next 48 hours we are going to hear A LOT of trade rumors. Here are some that have just started: