Andre Iguodala being courted by several teams, including your Utah Jazz

In the olden days if you first did not succeed in beating a team, you tried and tried again. Things changed significantly last off-season when the NBA moved to a “if you can’t beat’em, join’em” motto when Kevin Durant left the Oklahoma City Thunder for the Golden State Warriors. One year into the Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green era all the GMs around the league had to see the writing on the wall. The Cleveland Cavaliers were demolished unceremoniously in five games in the NBA Finals. And the Cavs were the NBA champs.

The game now isn’t “if you can’t beat’em — break’em.” And that means trying to weaken this Free Agency created monster through free agency; all that’s at risk is parity. ESPN reports that a number of teams are trying to do exactly that, making moves so that they can steal away a Finals MVP in Andre Iguodala.

From this piece Chris Haynes writes:

Andre Iguodala has become the foremost target in an attempt weaken the Golden State Warriors' chokehold on the NBA, league sources have told ESPN.

The Minnesota Timberwolves, San Antonio Spurs, LA Clippers, Philadelphia 76ers, Orlando Magic, Brooklyn Nets and Utah Jazz are among the teams interested in the 2015 NBA Finals MVP, sources tell ESPN.

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A significant number of personnel within NBA circles have come to the conclusion that rather than building a superteam, it's much more economically feasible and expeditious to just pluck away talent from the Bay Area juggernauts.

Chris Haynes, ESPN, 2017

Each team has an in, and a strategy; however, it remains to be seen if Andre will want to leave a team he helped power to rings. For the Utah Jazz ESPN suggests that their chase of Iguodala is contingent upon first losing out on Gordon Hayward’s affections.

From the article above:

Should Utah lose All-Star forward Gordon Hayward, who is expected to decline his player option and garner serious attention from the Boston Celtics, Iguodala is believed to be its top priority to fill that void, sources maintain.

Chris Haynes, ESPN, 2017

Personally? I’m not crazy about adding a 33 year old wing player who just isn’t going to get the defensive ‘respect’ calls playing for a small market team. Also, don’t we have enough wing players who already don’t get to play?

Of course, there’s the whole “we did this, we must do something to end this” motivation. If the Jazz did not trade with the Golden State Warriors and Denver Nuggets years ago then Iggy would never have been traded there in the first place. Trying to ‘reverse the curse’ or ‘undo the spell’ is kind of cool in a swords and sorcery kind of way. But the Jazz already did the NBA a favor by getting involved in this three team trade. They don’t need to do another by overpaying for a 33 year old guy because Gordon was in a rush to be the third option in Boston.

But that’s how I see it. It’s interesting to see how much truth there is to this rumor though.