After an interesting opening press conference yesterday, it looks like things are going to start getting interesting for the Utah Jazz.
According to Tony Jones, the Utah Jazz have had “at least one team in the lottery has already engaged the Jazz in potential trade discussions.”
That’s a pretty broad statement. That could mean literally anyone in the lottery, but it’s nice to hear that the Jazz are active in talks leading up to the draft. There’s a lot of great prospects in this draft and sitting at 5 gives Utah a punchers chance of possibly moving up, or even moving down if they feel like the prospect they want can be had if they move back.
It also looks like the whole “tanking is over” discussion yesterday might have been pretty overblown. In Jones’ article he says, “The draft is the priority. According to team sources.”
This statement matches an interview that Austin Ainge had with KSL this morning where he said that his statement of “we won’t be doing that” was more related to “manipulating lineups” than the “tanking.” You can listen to the interview with Ainge on KSL here, it’s definitely worth your time.
Ainge mentions that everything’s on the table, but what he was trying to say is the Utah Jazz want to compete with the players on the floor. It’s a much different message than what every local media person in the area was parroting.
Personally, I’m feeling great about the hire after a day of thinking about it. There’s a lot of cleaning up that Ainge can do. From Sarah Todd’s article we learned that Danny Ainge wasn’t even in Utah when Smith relayed the news he hired his son. That tells me a lot. Utah is in the midst of a vital draft and the elder Ainge is out of town. Perhaps he’s out scouting but it does make you wonder if the Jazz were really lacking more present leadership. Perhaps we should be giving Ryan Smith more credit that he understands what the team needs?
On top of this, Utah doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record with their drafting and this draft is vital, and next year too. The 5th pick is still good but you need savvy drafting at this stage of the draft and the Jazz just haven’t hit like they would have liked in a while. Maybe Austin Ainge can be that guiding force that leads Utah to finding those core building blocks they desperately need?
Time will tell but, at least early on, it feels like Utah has potential to be going in the right direction.
