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According to the all-seeing oracle of NBA news, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports / The Vertical, reported today that the Utah Jazz / Trey Burke marriage may be coming to an end. Finally. The NCAA player of the year, and three-time Western Conference Rookie of the Month will be packing his bags for the Nation's Capitol. Yes, the Washington Wizards (fresh of the heels of spending a billion dollars to keep Bradley Beal) seemed like the only team that wanted him and got him for a song.
The Utah Jazz are finalizing a deal to send guard Trey Burke to the Washington Wizards for a future pick, league sources tell @TheVertical.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) July 3, 2016
Wizards will send second-round pick to Utah for Burke, who had fallen out of Jazz's future plans. Great reset button on Burke's young career
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) July 3, 2016
Let's do the math here, the Jazz traded a #14 and a #21 for the #9 (Burke) and in turn are moving him for a future 2nd rounder from an Eastern conference team intent on making the playoffs. On paper that looks like there was some heat lost to entropy in this closed system. Of course, it's not a closed system and this over-simplification ignores the fact that Trey Burke did play for the Jazz and gave it his all. He started some games, finished some others, and hit two game winners (@ New York Knicks, vs. Orlando Magic if I remember correctly). There were some nice "take over" moments from him that worked. Not every thing did though.
The writing was on the wall for Trey as he was being transitioned from a starting point guard to a bench scorer -- and then lost all of his playing time after the trade deadline last season thanks in part to Shelvin Mack. With eight point guards owned by the Jazz (George Hill, Dante Exum, Raul Neto, Trey Burke were all on the books; Shelvin Mack has a non-guaranteed contract; Olivier Hanlan, Marcus Paige, and Tyrone Wallace exist as draft rights) it was safe to say that some of them were not going to come back to Utah for training camp.
Burke who had lost his minutes and was out of the rotation was the prime candidate. In a contract year worth $3 million and change he's an easy player to absorb in today's crazy, wild, cap space projections.
The Washington Wizards are led by star point guard John Wall. They don't have all the cap space in the world so a bargain player like Burke gives them some depth, some talent, and a serious chip on his shoulder for pennies on the dollar. It's a great move because I'm sure Burke, like a long list of other point guards of his type, seem to bounce back and find their place in the NBA after the high expectations of being a 1st rounder no longer apply to them on their second or third team in the league. I think he'll be fine. After all, he's still so young despite going into his fourth season in the NBA, he's younger than Rodney Hood for Zeus' sake!
Utah gets a future 2nd rounder for their efforts of driving down his trade value to well below what they gave up to get him in the first place.
Second-round pick Wizards will send to Utah for Trey Burke is in 2021, per source.
— David Aldridge (@daldridgetnt) July 3, 2016
But I know Utah will be fine as well, with Hill, Exum, and Neto taking care of things even if they have to say goodbye to Mack (They do not, but he's not on the books right now and the roster is already pretty full). It's unfortunate that the team didn't get a star from NCAA legend Trey Burke. But he's not the first, or the last, NCAA star who didn't immediately wow people in the pros.