Great advertisement for removing pick protections

Favors one of the most influential NBA players of our time.

The “we have to tank so we don’t convey a pick” is at the center of a lot of tanking lately. For that reason, one thing that the league could easily do is to say that teams can’t protect picks any more. You trade a first rounder? That’s it, you’ve traded it. It’s gone. Oh, it was the #1 overall? Whoops, too bad.

Dennis Lindsay made some awful moves at the end of his Jazz tenure, and this might top the list. IIRC he gave Rudy his massive contract, then brought back Favors, then traded down in the draft to pick Azubuike (who he said they had as a top 5 guy). I hated that they invested so heavily at the C spot that year and I really wanted McDaniels or Bane instead of Azubuike. It’s also funny that he traded pick 23 before the draft to NY for 27 and 38, then NY traded 23 on draft night for picks 25 and 33. Just shows his incompetence at the end.

I understand they gave him a max but there’s something upsetting about wasting a players prime on your team when you have no intention of winning. If he wanted to stay fair enough but seems like they priced him out of trades during this as well.

Ban trading protected picks. New lottery system is better but teams trying their pick to land protected area are worst tankers.

I don’t see the issue. OKC accepted an protected pick knowing that it was a possibility that it wouldn’t convey. That’s a risk you accept when taking a protected pick. They could’ve just refused the salary dump without a unprotected first.

It’s apart of negotiations and valued differently than a unprotected first. So basically we have a team complaining about a trade they agreed to not working out the way they want it to when they accepted the risk beforehand.

That’s the gamble of trading for protected picks, don’t want it then don’t accept a protected pick in a trade

In today’s NBA that would just be 4 second round picks

How has Utah messed with Lauri’s career? He’s getting paid and doesn’t seem overly concerned with the current situation

Can’t wait for the “Favors Rule”

It’s a miracle how healthy SGA was the last two seasons after he missed all of those games back when the Thunder “weren’t tanking”.

I read a long time ago a theory that the issue in the NBA is actually the capped player contracts. If every team is capped at offering a star the same dollar amount, it just means that the stars pick teams based on location (weather, additional marketing and earnings opportunities) and championship opportunity which just creates a snowball effect from there.

Removing the max cap would lead to some insane contracts (think prime LeBron getting offers for 75% of the salary cap) but it also means small market teams potentially have more ammo / the big market teams have a much harder time building superteams when the stars would be taking a MUCH bigger paycut to play together.

Sounds like some OKC propaganda to try & get me to believe the Thunder should be getting that pick

Not today Satan, not today

The new CBA has made it impossibly hard to do anything other than build a team through the draft, hope that team gets good before your young guys are up for new contracts, and repeat. This race to the bottom is so predictable and it’ll take more than fines to stop it.

“Utah has also messed with the career of Lauri”

Maybe I’m tripping but didn’t he just sign a contract extension like last year? Clearly he’s onboard, like I think tanking is a big problem but that’s kinda ridiculous lol

Lauri is getting paid in living in the hot mormon chicks capital of the world. He’s fine.

Meh this isn’t controversial fuck OKC. Jazz are doing nothing wrong to keep that pick, OKC agreed to the protections just like a Knicks did with Wizards. Fuck em.

This entire “tanking scandal” is the biggest farce in history. Fining the Jazz for doing the same thing as half the league meanwhile the Spurs still haven’t had any punishment for paying Kwahi under the table and the betting scandal still has barely even been mentioned. NBA is a fucking joke.

I love the whole they’re messing with Lauris career when Lauri has been pretty outspoken about how much he loves Utah.

Also bad teams tank. They do it because in no other sport can one player have a larger impact on a franchise. Tanking is impossible to weed out because of this.

Also I want to know why we care so much about this? Its not like we haven’t seen tanking before. This draft has so much buzz around it of course teams are gonna want to try and get one of those top guys.

Even if Utah plays to win yo what end would that be for the franchise? For the fans? Can you tell me one Utah fan that would rather try to compete for the play in to get smacked by OKC or to get Peterson or Dybansta?

Only 3 types of ppl i can think of have an issue with Utah.

1. Gamblers
2. Fantasy players
3. OKC fans

The Thunder did the exact same thing before becoming a good team, so they can fuck right off.

I can’t say I have massive amount of sympathy for the Thunder getting slightly disadvantaged by a team gaming the system.

OKC org is acting like a billionaire complaining about not having enough money

Just remove the protections. Either trade the pick or don’t. As far as I know, this is the only league that has them.

How much do you guys bet the Jazz finish with the worst record, and then their pick falls to like no. 12 in the lottery?

The Jazz have messed with the career of Lauri Markkanen? If you by messing mean paying him a lot more than virtually any team could or would have done after having resurrected his carreer, I suppose you might have a point.

The luxury tax was supposed to protect small market clubs but these sorts of salary dump moves have led to it spectacularly backfiring.

The apron rules are good but the tax is kind of a disaster.

To really understand how bad that trade was you have to consider that the Jazz had re-signed Favors after initially moving him to NOP. They brought him back and drafted Udoka Azubuike so they’d have 3 immobile bigs with Gobert while leaving two 3&D players (Bane, McDaniels) who they desperately needed on the board and drafting Dok instead. Absolutely catastrophic by the FO. The team and the fans are paying for it to this day.

We need to stop letting teams trade picks more than two years in advance. It’s terrible for fans

Such a disaster. Adam Silver, please wake up.

The protected first-round pick assaulted Lauri and injured him three different years?

Do not trade future picks to OKC.

Isnt this an example of bad rules producing bad outcomes?

The Jazz are protecting their interests. They are allowed to do so. I dont really see how this is more on the jazz than it is the NBA’s system producing this kind of behavior. Ultimately it had to be predictable that this would happen, and now that its top line news the league wants to pearl clutch.

So the jazz been tanking the last 3 years because they can’t give up a single #11-30 pick (9-30 if it conveys this year)?

I mean their 2024 pick was #10, they were just unlucky with the lottery. But if it was #11 it would have gone to okc, the trade would be done and the jazz wouldn’t be sunk for not having check notes Cody williams. 

Redditors love these type of posts but how different is it from fake news or bad faith facetious posts? Jazz are tanking because they’re looking for a superstar to build around (they dont want Markkanen to be the primary guy). 

If they want to make the pick worthless, they could try to win the NBA championship. A #30 pick is worth less than 2 seconds.

Utah is such a poverty franchise. You can blame Rudy + the Covid pandemic. They had a little squad. They were building something over there. To see it crash and burn like that so quickly. Tuff.

Jazz were willing to put their franchise in limbo just to not pay us a pick and I think that’s admirable

Pick protection is the easiest thing to change to curve egregious tanking. The next would be maybe more lotto picks and a flattening of the odds across the bottom 10 teams. Past that, there isn’t a solid fix without penalizing teams for egregious tanking measures (which Silver will never do)

To me I would change two things if I was the commissioner. One would be no more protecting draft picks when you trade them. If you trade them, you trade them. Two would be that every team that misses the playoffs has an equal chance in the draft lottery.

IMO the biggest blowback is the jazz gm saying they won’t blatantly tank again. Now they’re doubling down on it

Good since we traded Favors for Deron Williams I can find something else to blame on Deron Williams

They make the trade or not they’d still be tanking lmao

Realistically I can’t see the NBA agreeing on banning pick protections entirely. Think the best we can hope for is limiting the protections to one year.

You can trade a pick protected however you want: top 5, lottery, top 20, etc, but if you keep the pick then the following year it is either unprotected or gets conveyed into seconds. That’s it. No more lottery protected for 4+ years then turns into seconds.

Current teams that would affect: UTAH, POR, WAS, PHI. (Possibly more that’s just off the top of my head.)

Feed me more Utah Jazz news

Instead of $500,000 fine, reduce their salary cap number by that amount. Then continue that way. They wouldnt mess with that.

Honestly they should ban that type of protection, something along the lines of if you had a first that didn’t convert, for two years, you end up giving an unprotected first. Converting into a second means the team that has those restrictions go under a multi year tank like what we’ve seen.

To me the problem is that the teams have zero fear of being “too bad”. If they hit on a lottery pick they’re pretty much guaranteed 11 years before he can hit free agency There’s no pressure to win, they can always sell a star for a kings ransom and start again.

Remove pick protections and consecutive Top 5 picks. You got the #1 pick this year? The best you can do next year is 6th pick.

Lauri is an empty stats guy. No one “messed” with his career other than himself. He likes putting up above average numbers on a losing team. I can’t even picture him in the playoffs. He’d get out dawged all day

That’s depressing and Lauri deserves better.

Love Favors forever

Throw the book at them. Make them give up the Jazz name

Who is Jasmyn Wimbish, and why were they so dramatic when they wrote this piece? Lmao.

“In the midst of its longest multi-season losing stretch in nearly four decades”. Uhh, we missed four seasons in a row literally last decade. 5 in 6 years, with the only exception being a first round sweep. We’re still catching up to the Ty Corbin era. We aren’t even that bad yet.

“Messed with the career of Lauri Markannen”, as if his career was SO MUCH better in Cleveland and Chicago, lmao.

“He has not played more than 55 games in any of their last three seasons”, bitch, he averaged like, 50-60 games a year before he even joined the Jazz.

This writer is TRYING, lmao.

Did we force big, bad OKC to take a pick with protections? Oh how terrible.

There’s a fix that wouldn’t even be that complicated. Instead of basing lottery odds on record, each team, before the season, selects another team to be their proxy (pick order based on record the previous season). Your spot is dictated by the other teams record.

It still gives the worst teams some advantage. Washington and the Jazz would pick each other, for example, or something like that. But there would be no reason to worry about winning two or three extra games. Plus it would create temporary mini rivalries between fan bases.

I hate pick protections and it’s time for them to go away especially with the draft lottery odds.

The draft itself is a problem. So tired of competitive balance being a thing 21 one teams have won the championship in the history of the NBA and usually the same 9 that have not are sniffing the lottery every year. Scouting and culture matter way more than draft picks. If the league expands it’s going to make things worse. They really need to go to a regulation system that makes tanking a pretty severe punishment and then abolish the draft and also start a transfer process for players.

1. He and the team said he could play. That’s why HE HAD TO COME OUT THE NEXT SEASON AND SAY THEY ARENT SHUTTING ME DOWN. He told the thunder he’s playing. They were tanking

And they shut down a healthy Al Horford to lose games

1. No he didn’t the thunder just wanted to lose so they tanked

2. I haven’t heard a peep about Trae young or Anthony Davis especially not on this sub

3. It’s not

4. Why is it different to fake injuries and sit the 4th qtr? If it’s about integrity? They’re both intentionally losing games

5. Those are impact players that if yall would’ve tried to win or keep cp3 yall wouldn’t have had so it’s still benefitting them by tanking.

6. The thunder/spurs built a championship team by intentionally losing games and now the Jazz are doing it and everyone’s mad

If you ask me they doing it the smartest by seeing how everyone meshes

Wow Derrick Favors…that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. I remember the guy being a beast in fantasy in his prime lol. Those Utah teams with him, Gordon Hayward, Gobert and Joe Ingles were a lot of fun 

Dennis Lindsey was a great GM for Utah except for like this one month period where he did this trade and botched the draft.

We’d love to have Lauri back, if that helps

Do away with the draft. Let the incoming college and European players choose who they play for. Let them be free agents. If a team wants to blow all of their cap space on a 19 year old that’s never played in the NBA let them. Such a weird system where the same 5 or 6 shitty teams in the league are rewarded with the best talent every year and do absolutely nothing with them.

Ohhh. That’s so unique. A team tanking to preserve their pick? can’t believe it’s never happened before … oh wait.