The Utah Jazz have the 10th pick in the draft. It’s not ideal, admittedly. It may seem like it on the surface, after all, the draft is a great place not only to get players for tomorrow but to get players who can be traded for players today. You may want Reed Sheppard, but he may not be ready to play meaningful minutes just yet. So you can trade him, or the pick to get a guy like Devin Booker; someone who is ready to play.
So the 10th overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft doesn’t seem like the worst possibility, right? Well, according to some, the Jazz were pretty indifferent to the fall. They had the 8th best odds of obtaining the first overall pick, or another way of saying that, they were most likely to obtain the eighth overall pick in the draft.
It turns out, however, that wasn’t to be, because even though the odds were far better for them to get the 4th pick in the draft, the Jazz somehow fell from 8th to 10th. In doing so, they keep their pick, which is a plus but fall two places further back than originally thought. It could’ve been worse, however, as had they fallen to the 11th spot, they would’ve lost their pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder, who have had enough of them already.
So when the report came out that the Jazz was indifferent about the fall, it took many, ourselves included by surprise. Why would you not be mad that you fell as low as possible, while still maintaining your pick? After all, the whole reason you have the pick is because you sacrificed an entire season and another year of your best player’s primes. Clearly, this pick mattered.
Well, as it turns out, it did matter and according to a new report from KSL, the team wasn’t happy, or indifferent.
KSL posted a new piece where they talked to Utah Jazz VP of Player Personnel Bart Taylor. Apparently, according to Taylor, they were anything but happy, saying;
""Obviously, not happy about it; we'd rather stay at eight or move up. But we've been studying the draft already for the eighth pick. And there's still a lot of players there that we like. And I think we'll still get a good player at 10.""
Now, this is a bit different from what we heard before and it’s far more fitting with what we were hoping for. After all, why biff an entire season if you’re just going to be pretty nonchalant about the reason why.