The Utah Jazz could be in for a major revamp if they lose out on re-signing their free agents and if such ends up being the case, they’ll need to target these worthy replacements.
The Utah Jazz are facing an absolutely vital offseason where the decisions of several key free agents could very well alter the franchise for years to come. Obviously Utah’s biggest free agent priority is All-Star Gordon Hayward, followed by George Hill and Joe Ingles, but Shelvin Mack and Jeff Withey are free agents as well.
What Hayward opts to do with his unrestricted free agency will certainly influence the rest of Utah’s moves this summer, so he almost has to be the first domino to fall. Of course, depending on who stays with the team and who goes as well as who demands what kind of money will change everything the Jazz are able to do.
However, I still wanted to look at some possible free agent replacements from around the league for each of Utah’s five free agents on a strictly individual basis. For example, if Hayward, Hill and Ingles all re-sign at the dollar level that many presume they will, the Jazz likely wouldn’t be able to do much more financially than replace guys like Mack and Withey with draft picks or undrafted guys to fill those open roster spots.
But for the sake of this exercise, I’ve gone ahead and identified a replacement for each of the five players mentioned above that is comparable position-wise and hypothetically salary-wise, while being a logical fit for what the Jazz might need in their absence. Of course, ideally the Jazz will be able to keep Hayward and at least one of either Hill or Ingles, and then a large portion of this list will be unnecessary.
Nevertheless, as they say, luck favors the prepared, so let’s go ahead and jump right in to see whose services the Jazz could acquire to replace each of their free agents if they were to decide to head for greener pastures.