During the Jazz’s 2023-2024 end-of-season media availability, Utah Jazz CEO Danny Ainge made a bold claim, “We’re ready to roll… We’re ready to go big game hunting.”
This caused a purple mountain avalanche in Utah. Fans were theorizing mock trades and eagerly awaiting news of a big free agent signing. Now, a little over a year has passed, and the fans are looking at their current roster and beginning to wonder if there were ever really plans to take a shot.
What was Ainge’s Original Vision?
When pressed further about his claims, Ainge explained that he didn’t want to make small moves for no reason. He claimed,
“We’re not really interested in dinosaurs. We’re interested in like good six or seven-year [veterans], that are good players.”
It sounds simple, focus on big moves, but don’t get someone who won’t match the timeline of the current talent.
Clearly, though, the plans shifted. In this last offseason, the Jazz have: waived Jordan Clarkson for nothing, traded Colin Sexton for Jusuf Nurkić, and traded John Collins to the Los Angeles Clippers in a three-team trade involving the Miami Heat for Kyle Anderson, Kevin Love, and a future Clippers second-round pick.
The part of this that confused fans the most is that, in almost all of these transactions, the Jazz do something that directly goes against Ainge’s original comments. When a team waives a player who still has value around the league, it’s a ‘small move,’ and players like Nurkić, Love, and Anderson are textbook examples of dinosaurs who are far from the prime of their careers.
Is Utah Resetting Again?
These moves make it increasingly obvious that Utah will, yet again, be hitting the soft reset button. For fans of the Jazz, this has become all too familiar.
In 2022, Justin Zanik and Danny Ainge decided to trade Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert. Since that trade, Utah has refused to commit to building out a specific roster. The most notable example of this was during the 2022-2023 season. Utah started hot and was being praised by fans, with some calling it the quickest rebuild ever.
However, as the realism set in and the Jazz began to trend closer to .500, Ainge traded away multiple exciting pieces, including Jarred Vanderbilt, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Malik Beasley. After this trade, the Jazz tanked for the rest of the season, finishing 37-45.
What Went Wrong?
It’s clear that the Jazz stopped “Big Game Hunting.” Danny Ainge would confirm this earlier this year. We now know that Utah did make offers for big-name players, but simply didn’t have the assets to land one.
Utah only had a few players on bigger contracts, with none making enough to match the league’s stars. To make matters more complicated, the only player who could make teams consider a trade was the mostly untouchable Lauri Markkanen.
Utah wants to make a big-time move, but when Justin Zanik and Danny Ainge traded the all-star duo out of Utah, they didn’t receive any players that were proven stars, nor did they obtain anyone who had the ultra-high, superstar-type ceiling that NBA teams usually look for when moving a franchise player.
The problem with hunting is that you need the right kind of ammunition. What Ainge forgets is, although he’s known for great “hunts” in the past, even the most skilled hunter can’t hit a shot if they loaded their rifle— or their roster— with blanks.
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