Controversial Jazz trade looking more and more genius by the day

The offseason the Utah Jazz were regularly lambasted for this year has actually started to look better in hindsight. It's not like the team reaped the rewards from the moved they made, but it turns out their moves may have been smarter than we may have realized. One move that has aged like wine has been the John Collins trade.

Again, the Jazz got very little for Collins, but they weren't really trying to get the most value out of him as much as they were just trying to make room for their younger players. Two months into the season, the trade has completely backfired for the Clippers (and then some) for reasons other than Collins, but Collins himself has not been good for them.

A revealing statistic confirms just how badly the Collins experience has been in Hollywood.

Utah simply wanted to get rid of an expendable player, but where this move looks genius is the fact that Collins' struggles are not their problem anymore. His struggles were a problem his first year as a Jazzman, which made it seem like he would have been an albatross they would have had to swallow whole.

Luckily that wasn't the case, and now he can be someone else's problem.

The tragedy from Collins' decline as a Clipper

All of this is not to fire a shot at Collins. He was a good soldier in Utah. He never complained and definitely tried to be a good example for the young kids. The first year was pretty bad for Collins, but the second year was much better. In fact, he was so good that the Jazz had to bench him so he wouldn't get in the way of the tank.

They even had a deal lined up to send him to Sacramento before a twist of fate (named De'Aaron Fox) stood in the way. Regardless, the Jazz did right by Collins by putting him on a team that everyone believed was more in need of his services than they were. Unfortunately, it has backfired big time, and making it worse is that he's in a contract year, which definitely hurts his chances of getting another payday.

It may not be too late for Collins this year. The Clippers may simply re-route him either to re-tool or rebuild. He has shown how good he can be from his days in Utah and Atlanta. He hasn't been able to bring that to Los Angeles, but that doesn't mean he's done. The Jazz were proven very much right to give up on him period, that doesn't mean no one in Utah shouldn't be rooting for him to thrive no matter where he is.