Dominique Wilkins explains why he didn’t want to go to the Utah Jazz

Dominique Wilkins reveals why he didn’t want to play with the Utah Jazz

One of the biggest misses of all time for the Utah Jazz was their drafting of Dominique Wilkins, though not for the reason that many miss with drafts. No, Wilkins is a Hall of Famer, one of the greatest of all time, so it wasn’t the player that was the problem but the pick. See Wilkins didn’t want to play in Utah. The Jazz knew this and drafted him anyway.

The hope from the front office was that Wilkins would play power forward for the Jazz, helping Adrian Dantley and Darrell Griffith lead the team to the playoffs. With that duo and Mark Eaton, the Jazz weren’t too far off from having a winning combination. But Wilkins did not want to play power forward, and so the team traded him for Freeman Williams, John Drew, and $1 million in cash.

Wilkins would go on to be a Hall of Famer for the Atlanta Hawks, and the trade looks so much worse with 40 years in between the pick and today. But it turns out, it wasn’t just the desire to not play power forward that led Wilkins to not want to go to Utah, it was his love of Georgia.

Speaking to Vlad TV (via Basketball Network), Wilkins revealed that a major element in not wanting to go to Utah was his love for Georgia, namely the city of Atlanta, where he spent a lot of time in college. As a member of the Georgia Bulldogs men’s basketball team, Wilkins was entrenched in Georgia and he wanted it to remain that way.

"I did not want to go to Utah at that time when I got picked. I wanted to stay in Atlanta. Living in Atlanta, going to school down the road at Athens, I wanted to play for the Hawks. I had no idea I was gonna be playing with them all the years I played, but it took a couple of elements to make that happen. First of all, I used to travel around with Magic Johnson, and we used to take all the top guys in the NBA, and we’d play summer ball all over the country. So I think that got the ball rolling, just playing with Magic. I never went to Utah, never visited, so I was traded not too long after that."

This was a bad break for the Jazz. The ’82 draft wasn’t deep and only had three real “prizes” in it, and they went first through third. So the Jazz didn’t have another option. That said, they could’ve gotten far more for Wilkins, like a first-round draft pick.

Heck, even an Atlanta second-rounder may have netted them someone like Doc Rivers in ’83. Say what you will about him as a coach, he was an All-Star caliber player. The lack of foresight in trading away Wilkins will forever be one of the few big mistakes the franchise has made.