The Utah Jazz may have screwed up bad with this year's trades

Morale, it's the one thing that can deliver success or failure depending on how it's being cared for and nurtured. A team that isn't ran well will often have poor morale. Players will ask for trades, free agents won't come, and draft picks will look to bail when their contracts are up. It's something that can't be easily fixed but can be easy to screw up.

And it sounds like that's what Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik did with the Utah Jazz last week. The NBA Trade Deadline didn't go the team's way, as they got back some lackluster draft picks for pretty key players. Fans aren't the only ones who see just how little they got back, players saw it too, and just like the Jazz's fandom, the players aren't very happy about where things are going.

The Jazz are 0-2 since the deadline, and they look lost at times on the court. It doesn't help that the team is now starting Keyonte George or playing Taylor Hendricks; both players with huge holes in their games. It also doesn't help that the team didn't get anyone back in those trades that could actually help the squad either.

Things have gotten so bad, that it sounds like the locker room is lost, with Andy Larsen of The Salt Lake Tribune reporting that the team is down badly after the recent trade, with some believing they were misled about the intentions of the team for the year. It sounds like the players felt lied to about the intentions of the team this year and rightfully so.

If the team isn't able to salvage this season, then there may be a huge shakeup this offseason with players wanting out of a situation in Utah that is, quite honestly, looking worse and worse with each passing day. If guys like Lauri Markkanen start asking for trades, then Ainge and Zanik need to be fired, because the talent is far more important at this stage in the rebuild than a GM who's achieved very little and an executive who hasn't won an NBA title in nearly 20 years.