The Utah Jazz made a major shakeup in their front office by hiring Austin Ainge as their new President of Basketball Operations. The move received some criticism because he's Danny Ainge's son, but Ryan Smith made a rather bizarre admission that not only did Danny not factor into the Jazz's decision to hire his son, but he didn't even know they had in the first place.
During his appearance on 97.5 the KSL Sports Zone, Smith revealed he was nervous about Danny Ainge's reaction to the Jazz hiring Austin, as they didn't let him know beforehand.
“I couldn’t get a hold of Danny for like eight hours, and I kept getting a little bit more nervous,” Smith said. “I share everything with Danny, and we’re very close. He’s not only a mentor, but I feel like I get to work with a Hall of Famer every single day, and I was like ‘Hey, this is either going to go really well, or really bad.'”
Smith clarified that once he got in touch with Danny, the Jazz CEO was cool with everything.
“Fortunately enough, [Danny] was like, ‘You know what, that was brilliant, Austin is a star,'” Smith said.
Danny and Austin worked together in Boston, so, besides being his own bloodline, Danny knows firsthand what the Jazz have in his son. If anything, the Jazz are lucky that this move involved his son because Danny might not have been too happy had it not been someone else.
That is the kind of move that can cause organizational strife
While nepotism may not have factored into hiring Austin, it may have factored into why Danny took it all in stride. Vital employees of teams can be annoyed when they are not consulted on certain hires. It's arguably even riskier if it involves an employee's family member, though Danny's reaction says otherwise.
Typically, when teams make decisions, whether it involves hiring new personnel or drafting/signing/acquiring a player(s), it is typically a team decision, not made by only the owner. When others in the organization aren't consulted, it can give off the impression that the owner gives little regard to their input, which can cause problems.
For all intents and purposes, that wasn't the case here, but Smith was definitely playing with fire by not telling Danny about what he was going to do. He may have escaped potential internal issues in this case, but hopefully, he'll learn going forward not to try that again.