Utah Jazz: 5 Stars to pair with Don if he can’t forgive Rudy

Shai Gilegous-Alexander

Let me get this disclaimer out here: the Oklahoma City Thunder would be absolutely crazy to trade off Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at this point. The sophomore is going to be a star in the league for a while.

He’s leading their team in scoring, a team which was on track to place fifth in the Western Conference. He’s a ball hawk with his length, allowing him to grab lots of rebounds, steals, and blocks.

Him and Mitchell would make a good defensive backcourt, and so long as the Jazz surround those two with plenty of shooters on the perimeter, they would be a problem to contain for a long time.

The problem would be convincing Sam Presti and the Thunder to take on Rudy Gobert. They already have Steven Adams in place, whose made quite the mark in his time in Oklahoma City. The team is poised for a long term rebuild with their stash of future picks.

They could try to cash in all of those chips and acquire winning talent right now before Chris Paul rides off into the sunset of his NBA career. Pairing Gobert with Paul, arguably the best passing point guard in the league right now, would be a good start to a contending team.

Then re-signing Danilo Gallanari this offseason would be key as well, with the final step being acquiring more depth to sustain the grind of an 82 game season and the postseason after that.

Like I said earlier, the Thunder would have to be crazy in order to do all of that right now. Now is a bad time for a team to try to jump into win-now mode, as the stacked Western Conference is set to get stronger next year.

But just for one second, imagine a starting five of Mitchell, SGA, Bojan Bogdanovic, Royce O’Neale, and Adams taking the court with Jordan Clarkson coming off the bench. Not a bad return for Gobert in my opinion.