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Utah Jazz - Lakers: The Utah Jazz Trade Rob Pelinka Should Make Posthaste
Danny Ainge has a winning problem. Ainge, a longtime Boston Celtics fixture both on the floor as a player during the 1980s and in the front office from 2003-2021, is now stewarding a Utah Jazz rebuild as that team's prime decision maker. After the club flamed out in the first round of the 2021 playoffs, Ainge traded several well-compensated veterans on Utah's roster in a clear effort to help the team bottom out this year. All-Stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, plus role players Royce O'Neal, Bojan Bogdanovic and Patrick Beverley (a throw-in from the Gobert deal who never actually played a game in Utah), all found new homes through Ainge's dealmaking this offseason. "Unfortunately" for Ainge, a lot of the pieces he received in return for his dealmaking, plus some leftover vets from the team's Gobert/Mitchell era, have congealed together incredibly well under new head coach Will Hardy (an ex-Celtics assistant coach, of course). The Jazz are 3-0 right now, having beaten three straight playoff-bound clubs at that: the Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves and New Orleans Pelicans. Ex-Cavaliers Lauri Markkanen and Collin Sexton have enjoyed stellar starts to their Jazz careers. Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley, and rookie center Walker Kessler have all been better-than-expected after arriving to Utah from the Minnesota Timberwolves. Jazz guards Jordan Clarkson and Mike Conley, both big holdovers the club's playoff era, remain pretty darn effective. Center Kelly Olynyk, added in the Bogdanovic trade out of Detroit, has also been surprisingly solid. So what's Danny Ainge to do? Should he let this over-performing Utah roster continue to succeed, even if it could hurt the team's chances of tanking for a shot at top 2023 draft prospects Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson? Of course not! I'm not saying the Jazz are going 82-0 or anything, but this incarnation of the team still seems much, much better than most folks expected heading into the season. With Markkanen performing at this level, they could easily be a play-in tournament-level type club (i.e. anywhere from a 7-10 seed in the West). If the team were to win its play-in tournament games and enter the NBA's actual playoffs, it would forfeit a lottery slot entirely. That can't be risked. Sooner or later, Ainge will need to start shipping out the rest of his good players to ensure that this team can bottom out effectively. Your Los Angeles Lakers have already dealt with Ainge once since his fire sale began, taking back Beverley in a deal that sent Talen Horton-Tucker and Stanley Johnson to Utah. THT has barely left the bench in his brief time with the Jazz (he's averaging just 12.3 minutes a game), while Johnson was cut before the start of the regular season. The Lakers as currently constructed are criminally, historically devoid of shooting (especially from long range) so far this season. They look decidedly worse than the Jazz, but since they don't actually own the rights to their draft pick this year (the New Orleans Pelicans can swap picks with L.A. in 2023), it does not actually behoove them to be this bad.