Jazz Must Make Most Of This NBA Draft

The Utah Jazz have the 12th, 42nd and 54th (from Cleveland) picks in the 2015 NBA draft, as well as a plethora of future incoming picks and various player assets in the way of non-guaranteed contracts. They should make the most of this particular draft as it appears they won’t be acquiring many more lottery picks, if their current trajectory continues.

There are currently five NBA lottery picks on the Utah roster, with a sixth incoming on June 25th, provided the Jazz don’t opt to trade down.

Utah won 13 more games than projected by Las Vegas odds setters in 2014-15 and finished the post-All-Star Break portion of the season 19-10. With a core of Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors and Rudy Gobert only getting better — the former pair still a year or two from their statistical primes — the Jazz should be knocking on the cellar door of the Western Conference NBA Playoffs in 2016.

That’s considered NBA Draft no-man’s land: Not good enough to compete for a title, but not bad enough to acquire top young talent. The Jazz are moving out of the talent acquisition phase and into the team building phase, with the looming draft a telling one, maybe the last time Utah has a chance to nab a real difference-maker in the lottery.

Granted, Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey has already proven capable at identifying potential later down the list, with players like Gobert and Rodney Hood, and in San Antonio, Kawhi Leonard, but generally speaking, the top talent is in the lottery, and Utah shouldn’t be picking there again for many years.

Walt Perrin, recently intimated that he sees three tiers of players in the top of 2015 NBA Draft, the first tier the top four, the next ending at the eight spot, and a large drop-off thereafter

Vice President of Player Personnel, Walt Perrin, recently intimated that he sees three tiers of players in the top of 2015 NBA Draft, the first tier the top four, the next ending at the eight spot, and a large drop-off thereafter. With the Jazz at 12, they may work hard to move up into the upper two tiers of players to seek a target.

While Jazz brass are always keeping all options open, all have repeated the refrain that the Jazz’s biggest need is perimeter shooting in order to move forward to the next step. Indeed, as David Locke pointed out, check out the top three-point attempt teams in the NBA and where they ended up in this years NBA Playoffs. Most of them are still playing.

In the past, when Kevin O’Connor was the general manager, the Utah Jazz had a BPA policy for the NBA Draft, that is, Best Player Available.

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Dennis Lindsey has indicated that he will draft a tier player more conducive to the current makeup and needs of the team, rather than BPA, as O’Connor always did. That’s a fundamental difference in philosophy between the current generation of Jazz leadership as opposed to the last.

O’Connor was terrified of passing up a player that could potentially come back to haunt them, while Lindsey takes a more measured, step-by-step approach to the process, addressing specific needs to the overall goal. O’Connor tried to take the best talent he could get, then fill in the holes around those parts and pieces — and was moderately successful at it. Just, Utah could never quite get over that hump under O’Connor’s means.

While it remains to be seen if Lindsey’s approach is the better one in the long run, it’s so far so good at this point.

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