Today the Jazz (31-26) traded All-Star point guard Deron Williams to the New Jersey Nets (17-40) in exchange for Devin Harris, Derrick Favors, and a pair of future 1st round draft picks. It's a sad day, really, for the Jazz, who have now shipped out their best player. I think the Jazz will struggle to make the playoffs now (they were already struggling anyway).
The Jazz will miss the scoring and assists from Williams as well as just having a great player on the team. Clearly the Jazz didn't think there was a good chance of Williams re-signing. On the other hand, they did get quite a few assets in the trade which is better than the nothing they would have received had Williams left as a free agent following next season. Favors is young and has a lot of potential. Harris is at the very least a competent point guard who has the potential to be quite good. And there is a pretty good chance that the two draft picks the Jazz have received will turn out to be pretty high.
Still, the team still feels as though it is in rebuilding mode at this point and that's a little hard to stomach. But, who knows I guess, we'll see how things play out, maybe the new guys will really mesh with the rest of the team and the Jazz can make a good run.
I think this whole trend as of late was really sparked by the LeBron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh thing last summer. Those three all decided to team up and try and go for something big. Following this there was the whole Carmelo Anthony saga which ended up with him being dealt to the Knicks this week. It seems like all the stars got it in their heads that they needed to do something LeBron James-ish, i.e. play in a big market with other superstars. It really is a sad trend in the NBA as guys don't seem to be concerned with team loyalty at all, or building championship teams the conventional way, as in the actual sense of being a team with all the guys working together. The league seems to have lost most of the traditional competitiveness as far as teams and franchises and rivalries are concerned -- now it's just how guys can get what they want in whatever way possible. It's not that guys don't want to win, they would just rather team-up with fellow cohorts and/or play in a large market.
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Deron Williams was the man! He often seemed like the only guy on the court who looked like he wanted to win. I wish him the best playing for that Russian billlionaire owner of the Nets. It will be tough to watch the Jazz muddle through a rebuilding year (or 2 or 3).
ReplyDeleteD-Will was a baller and will be missed. It's tough to blame the Jazz too much for the trade, though. It seemed like there was a good chance he would leave as a free agent, so it's good to at least be assured of something in return. It definitely could be tough watching the Jazz rebuild for a while.
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