We’re All Worried About the Wrong Draft Pick

This season for the Utah Jazz is known to be the season of discovery.  The reasons behind that are the Jazz what to find out what their young players are capable of so management has a better idea moving forward on how to construct and build this team.  This meant the Jazz are going to put a bunch of young, inexperienced players out on the court playing a majority of the minutes.  The result of that was expected to produce a team that was more worried about growth and individual player development than overall team wins and losses.  Due to the talent that the 2014 draft is expected to produce many fans have been cheering for the Jazz to lose all season long.

The idea of getting a top 5 pick in this draft to add to the current roster made fans believe we could put a contender on the court in the next 2 or 3 seasons.  The problem with the whole idea of getting a top 5 pick in the 2014 draft is that the current Utah Jazz team is much better than expected.  Since the 1-14 start the Jazz are 20-25 overall and with the starting line-up of Trey Burke, Gordon Hayward, Richard Jefferson, Marvin Williams and Derrick Favors the Jazz are 19-10.  The Jazz are flirting with being a team that is .500 since the horrid start to the season which is much better then many fans (hoped) expected them to be.

During the off-season Dennis Lindsay, who is turning out to be an absolute genius, made a trade that many fans and critics questioned.  He took on a bunch of salary to the current roster by adding Richard Jefferson, Andris Biedrins and Brandon Rush from the Golden State Warriors in a 3 team deal that helped the Warriors get Andre Iguodala and sending Randy Foye to the Denver Nuggets.  The hidden prize in this trade was an unprotected 1st round pick in the 2014 NBA Draft.  At the time the pick looked like a consolation prize since the Warriors added Andre Iguodala to a roster that made it to the 2nd round of the playoffs last season.  Now it’s starting to look like there’s a possibility that the original lowly regarded pick could turn into a lottery pick.

The Golden State Warriors are currently in the 6th seed in the Western Conference but are currently only 2 games ahead of the Memphis Grizzlies who sit 9th in the Western Conference.  There are still 20 some odd games until the end of the regular season and while Golden State looks like a team that couldn’t possibly miss the playoffs I’m here to tell you that it’s a bigger possibility then we may think.  All teams in the West will play the majority of their remaining schedule against teams that are also in the Western Conference and since the Western Conference is much stronger this season than the East it means that any team at any time could go on a random 3 game losing streak.

So I call all Jazz fans now to stop worrying about wins and losses for the Jazz.  Be excited for the Jazz to win and cheer for them to do well since the end goal for this team is to be a contender and most of the players on the roster will need to play a role in that.  What we should all be rooting for is the Golden State Warriors to lose and lose a bunch as this season winds down.  If this draft is as deep as it’s been said to be then the Jazz will be able to demand a lot of attention with 2 picks in the top 14.  The possibilities go from trading both picks to get an established star in the NBA to trading 2 picks to move up and get 1 pick that is higher than we currently have.  So again lets stop hoping the Jazz lose so we have higher odds come lottery time, lets hope karma comes back and bites the Golden State Warriors in the butt to propel us to being one of the best teams in the West for the next decade.