So I've got a list of It's maybe curious after talking to Jeff Johnson last segment of the best high school basketball players from the state of Utah historically and how many of them went to the NBA.
It is a short list.
So we were talking about the dynamic of how Alex Jensen goes about the process of building this roster for the University of Utah. We'll get to this in a little bit, but let's welcome to our friend Sarah Todd from the des Red News, the two time Utah Sports Rider of the Year.
On a Monday, Sarah, Happy Monday. How are you.
I'm good? Justin Will practice today and so I've just been really lazy and continue to count down the hours and days until this season is over.
Oh man, I tell you what I always feel. You know, you feel for a lot of people during the rebuild. You feel for the fans, you feel for a lot of the team employees.
I feel really bad for Will Hardy.
I think is a great coach, and I really hope before his contract is up we get to see him coach a team with decent NBA players. But it's gotta be wearing on the beat, right, Like you Andy TJ, whoever else is on the beat, I always lose track. But what what what's it like for somebody who's do you cover the Warriors? I mean, you're a beat writer for a rebuilding team.
What's that like?
Yeah? I mean I think I I think I'm experiencing the same fatigue that the fans are. I think I do feel bad for the players because I feel like they have to be feeling what I'm feeling at such an exponential level, but also are constantly being asked by the coaching staff and like their competitive souls to still care every day. And I'm like sometimes, you know, I go into the arena to this like last stretch of the season, and I'm like, ugh, they're not gonna try.
Why why do I need to try? Like I feel like throwing in the towel. But and there are a lot of times where I'm writing stories and I'm like, God, can I really write five more stories about how Isaiah Collier passes the ball? But can't choose, Like is that really what I'm writing today? Well? Yeah, it just sometimes feels like going through the motions. But I try to give myself a pep talk on game days.
Yeah, Look, ultimately, our jobs rule, so we will not complain. And I don't mean that we are, but you know, I was down to my brother's house for dinner last week and he said, how many Jazz games have you been to this year? And I said, I think it's been like five or six. And the Celtics were going to roll into town. This is when before Boston came into town. He said, well, are you gonna go see the Celtics And I said, I said, you know what, like no, and I live. I can get to the
arena in less than ten minutes with no traffic. I have a media credential, I could get a free meal. And it's just like hard and it's not part of my job, so I don't need to be there anymore. I mean, for seven years, I did preaff and post so I was there for every game, and I'm sure part of me not going as much as like, you know, for one hundred nights a year, I left that arena after midnight and I'm just not like into it anymore.
But it is it is tough to like, certainly.
If it's not part of your job, even if you can go for free, it's just it's tough to motivate yourself to go when there's just not a lot of seriousness on the other side about winning.
Yeah, I think, And like you said, I'm I'm never gonna like complain about the job, right, Like I get paid to watch basketball, so like I know that my life is good. So that is not what I'm saying.
At all, but.
It's my job to write about it. And so you know, we've got what ten eleven games left this season, and at this point, like, I don't think that there's like any juice that I'm gonna squeeze out of this team that the fans don't know about, the watchers don't know about. Like I don't think that there's anything that I'm gonna illuminate that like people don't know because truly, the story right now is like what lottery pick or the Jat's
gonna get. And so I think that everyone fans me, including like I'm counting down the days so I can get to the combine in Chicago and the lottery drawing night.
When is that, by the way, is that the first week of May.
It's I think it's May twelfth is lottery night. So and then the combine follows that.
So I do have to say thank you. And you probably don't know why, but when you or Andy or whoever writes a really compelling piece, it gives me topics and content on the show, because if we're honest to your earlier point, like hey, Kyle Philipowski's kind of like Kelly olynnok, like hey Isaiah call your can pass, but not you like how many how many times can we regurgitate the same old stuff and try to make it interesting for listeners? That and we have a very smart
basketball fan based Jazz fans are smart. We've got high level basketball in this market for forty plus years. You can't fool them. But when you wrote the piece on I guess I'll just kind of reduce it down to, hey, this has been a tear down, and the rebuilt starts right now. I want to be clear, I am not knocking on you at all. I'm just knocking on that premise that, of course, is coming from the front office.
I think it's a little bit silly, but I've been able to ask, like all my NBA guests directly crediting your piece about this whole idea that hey, guess what, fans, we have not been rebuilding. We have been tearing down and we're actually starting the rebuild. Now it's revisionist history. I don't buy it at all, but kind of take us into the background of this information and explain kind of this idea to a lot of fans who read your piece.
Yeah, I think you know. The point of the piece was like I'm being honest with the fans about like what could be coming up over the next couple of years, and like kind of letting people know that, you know, pie in the sky, like what if the Jazz get Cooper flag and everything feels like puppies and rainbows in June,
Is that mean that the Jazz are about to be good? Like, No, that's actually like one of the first big pieces of the rebuild, Like the Jazz have this point, not gotten acquired created any of like the really big foundational pieces of what like the next era of Jazz basketball is going to be. And so like that's what they're still
searching for. Lowry market In looks like a great piece to have and like could be a core piece of a team moving forward, but like, we don't even know if he's going to be a core piece of the team moving forward. We don't know what his future is going to hold. Walker Kessler looks like a very good young player. We also don't know if that's going to be here in three five years. Like, we just don't
know at this point. And until the Jazz gets someone where it's very clear like this is the franchise player, this is the player that we're going to build everything around, then there is nothing to build, right And so that that's kind of the impetus on writing the story and yeah, like getting to that, you know, talking to executives around the league, talking to executives within the Jazz, talking to coaching staff, talking to players, like it doesn't feel like
any of them feel like they're on necessarily the rise right now, but that they're getting ready to be on the rise. And so that that's kind of the lens through all of it is like, Yeah, they've been working towards what could happen this summer and then even next summer during two of like the most highly touted drafts of the last few years, and that's where they're hoping to find foundational pieces that can really take the Jazz into the next era.
Okay, so this just reeks out of a Hey, we didn't do this the right way, because when you move on from your two stars and your coach walks away and your general manager walks away, call me old fashioned Sarah,
that indicates you're starting a rebuild. And yes, a rebuild begins after you tear it down, but there's nothing more you know, indicative of a, hey, we're tearing this down, then moving on from two all stars that are in their prime and having your coach walk away and having your general manager walk away, doesn't that indicate that, yes, okay, we've we've started this process and now we've got to build it back up.
I mean, that's that's my takeaway.
Yeah. Absolutely, Like you know, the sort of reporter one oh one version of the article that like we're talking about from this right, that's just like, hey, these are the facts. This is how the teardown happened, and this is how fans can expect for the rebuild to go for the next few years. Now. The Sarah Todd column version of that is like, yeah, they messed up. They
didn't get rid of Mike Conley fast enough. They had Kelly o Linnok on the team with Lowry Market and a Walker Castler, and that looked too good for too long. They should have been selling off parts faster than that. It's not like they didn't know that Mike Conley was good at basketball. Like it could have been worse, sooner for the better, right, Like not tanking to the absolute bottom to try during a Victor Wimbin Yama year was
probably a failure. And so like, yeah, the column and Sarah tat opinion version of that is like the teardown took too long, and instead of trying to have one of the foundational pieces now and tanking really hard over the last couple three years rather than just last, the last year would have looked really good in terms of kind of the the in house assets you could have gotten through the draft, and that's just not where we are and it's not what happened.
Let me kick the tires with you on this, because to your point about some of the good players, you know, like Lowry All starred two years ago, I was ryd people. He played the first portion of that season with Mike. You know, he had grown ups with him, and that's why he looked the way he looked then. Juck's opposed to the way he looks now. He's playing with kids. He's playing with children's It's completely understandable that Lowry has not been the same place he was two years ago,
and I don't think any of it's his fault. But over the course of their semi competitive Conley olynic As you outlined some good NBA vets, I heard rumors. We all heard the Drew Holliday rumor. I mean, hell, Bobby Marks came on this radio show and said the Jazz had a deal in place for Drew Holliday, that Portland liked, Drew just wanted to play in Boston, which you understand because now he's an NBA champion.
It might be again this year.
I know that Ryan Smith has spoken publicly about the fact that he thought they had a deal for Christaps Porzingis from Dallas. There are other rumors that throughout the course of when they were just kind of semi competitive, they were making in roads to exhibide this growth with some very good players. Any insight as to whether or not they were close at all with any of those deals.
I mean close is that's an interesting word, an operative word, right, like like sure, I think there were deals on the table that the Jazz could have said yes, or no to and then some of those deals they said no to them because they didn't like the offer that was on the table, and so like, I think that they were close and that if if the Jazz or the other teams involved would have said yes, that something would
have happened. But it's I mean, that can be a little bit revision as history too, and then we could go down the road of like with Drew Holliday have
actually been good for this team. I mean, like you're I think that part of the problem is when we're looking at like what all of all of possibilities and what could have been, Like the Jazz had uh put feelers out trying to go after mckail Bridges, the Jazz had put feelers out about to Holiday, about Paul George, about a number of players, and I don't think that if you survey the landscape of the NBA right now, if any of those players have actually come to Utah,
that it would have fixed anything or even given the Jazz a team that could be competitive in the West. And so their failures on that are actually probably good for the longevity and future of the team. That being said, trying to make those deals and thinking that they could help is also probably a failure.
Yeah, yeah, well said, and I referenced earlier about you know, feeling bad for team employees, feeling bad for fans, feeling bad for beat riders, and then feeling bad for Will Hardy and you recently wrote a piece on Will choosing the Jazz as a result of Danny Ainge and his track record. And as I've said before, Danny doesn't need me to stand up for him. You can go look at his track record. As I mean, when you look at Danny Ainge and his resume in pro basketball, it's
a really short list. It's guys like Pat Riley, and it's guys like Jerry West who have been great players, and they've coached, and they've been in front offices. He even did a little media and he was really good at it. And I he's often just wonder aloud where Will's head at is at here he has two years left on his deal. It's a very rare thing for head coach to have two separate options picked up. And that's where we're at because they obviously think very highly
of him. But I do wonder if this plan does not come to fruition and the luck is not on the Jazz side. And we're sitting here in March of twenty twenty seven and the Jazz are once again spinning their wheels with no real positive tangible direction forward. What that means for this head coach? They could go get
another job tomorrow. So illuminate us a little bit on this process and what Will said to you about why you chose Utah And do you think he's long for this job even if in two years they're not giving him the horses he enters Jim's most night just behind the eight ball.
Yeah, I mean, when Will Hardy took this job, he knew what the assignment was like. It wasn't going to be a secret. I think at that point they hadn't traded Donovan Mitchell yet when he took the job, but he knew that that was a possibility, a probability, and that he was probably going to be a coach of a team that was going to be going on a rebuild. And so it's not like I've used this comparison before.
When Steven Silas took the job for the Houston Rocket, that was a James Harden team with some incoming young players that looked like they were going to be fresh and ready to help, and within a few weeks, I mean, Harden is forcing his way out, not showing up to training camp, and then you have a ton of young guys that have no direction. That is not the job
that Steven Silas signed up for. And so that's that's kind of the opposite end of the spectrum here, where like Will Hardy knew that this is what was going
to happen. And so I think that that's not to say that he is not fatigued, that he is not hoping to see a light at the end of the tunnel, right, but looking at a job where it's probably going to rebuild, it's probably going to take a lot of time and is going to be a lot of hard knights and struggles and fatigue, I think that that Will was ready for that and knew it and also looked across the table and was like understood the vision that Ryan, Danny
Justin Zanik all had and trusted that they were going to be able to pull it off. And so then what we have to wonder is then at what point does he continue believing that they can pull it off or does he lose face that they can pull it off, and so I think that that's what we're talking about kind of in the two to three year stretch from now.
And you're right, like Will Hardy is well respected. He's well regarded across the league, especially by a lot of the younger coaches in the league who are successful, and they look at Will and they think that he is one of the brightest coaches in the league. And so he could get a coach tomorrow, or he could get a coaching job somewhere else tomorrow. And you're right about that. And I think that that's one of the big questions going forward is how long is Will Hardy going to
be able to stick with it? And I think that because he signed up for it, that there's probably a longer holding pattern there that he can hang on to. But it is something to pay attention to.
So let's operate off a fun hypothetical.
Let's say Sarah Todd is at the draft lottery on May twelfth and for the first time, Lady Luck shines on the Jazz and they grab number one, and Cooper Flagg suddenly is a jazz man. And I keep saying to the listeners, if you have not watched Cooper flag. You should because he's very good, and he's very exciting. He pops right off the screen and he will be good right away, even for a player that should be a senior in high school.
He turned eighteen in December. It's wild.
Okay, So if that happens, Sarah, as you outline in your piece, a couple of directions. Direction one is marketing Cooper flag your front court. All Right, we got something here, and you know, depending on what they do around them, that's a team that probably is not bottom three or bottom five next year. But it doesn't mean they're top
three or five either. They're probably in the middle. So the other option is to say, all right, the rebuild starts now with his eighteen year old and this is our timeline starting with him, which means nobody's safe, including Walker. And it's wild to consider because Walker is really good and really young. But if the jazz land Cooper flag, what does next year look like?
Yeah, I mean, if you're looking at the twenty twenty sixth draft, I'd say that next year is probably going to look a lot like this year. And if you think about other really young players, I think you know it's not a stretch. I don't think that this is a hot take to say that Cooper Flag is not as good as Victor Wimbinyama and the Spurs. It's not like they made the playoffs in Victor's first couple of years. And yes, Victor's out for the rest of the season
and there was some health issue there. But we've also seen that you can very easily sit players a number of games and tank your way into another lottery situation. And so I would expect for the Jazz to continue to want either Ajda Banza, Darren Peterson, maybe Cameron Boozer if they can get into the top three of the
twenty twenty six drafts. That's what I fully expect. And if you have Cooper Lowry Walker on the same team and it looks like it's going to be too good, then you probably have to get rid of one of those players, and or you have to really really manage the injury report in even a more remarkable way than the Jazz have done this season. Right now, that's what I expect to happen. If the Jazz were to get Cooper Flag, I don't expect for them to try to
start getting into the playoffs right away. Probably wouldn't be able to do that with Cooper Flag and this roster anyways, And so I would expect for more moves to be made and for the Jazz to try and get into the lottery again next year.
Cody Williams is twenty years old, and you know he is a young player on a team that's not serious about winning. So I'm not trying to judge him too harshly. I'm just trying to be honest about what you would like to see from a player drafted where he was drafted, and he spent some time with the Stars and there were some bright moments, but not enough.
I mean, when you have a top ten pick, if.
You sent him down to the G League, you want like thirty and fifteen every night.
You want him to dominate.
And he's received more playing time as of late, and it just hasn't looked good. What's fair to say year one, twenty year old Cody Williams, and have you changed your calculus on who he can be in this league?
I have. I was probably a lot higher on him before and during the draft process, and coming into this season, what I've seen is it's really rough, Like there's not really any way to Sugarcoat that it's been a really rough season for Cody, And I think that some of the things that you thought about him during the draft process, right, like, he's able to kind of disappear during a game, but not in a negative way, make an impact, do really smart things, still score and just look very smart and
not look like he was trying to take over, but still making all of the right moves. That's kind of the player profile that he had coming into the season. And I think that the problem is that now Cody Williams disappears during a game and not in a positive way. He just like doesn't make an impact more often than not. And the shooting is concerning because of how inconsistent the shooting is, and there's a lot of air balls. There's a lot of times that he's you know, hitting out
the backboard or front running. It's not like, you know, if he was consistently missing and he was hitting back room all the time, and you'd say, like, you know, you'd make some minor tweaks. But because the misses are so inconsistent, then that the shot is concerning. And yeah, it's I think that as it stands right now, I
see Cody Williams. And like you said, it's a bad year, a down year, a bad team, and so you don't want to make it all about him, and so I want to give him benefit of the doubt and give him a little bit of grace in the situation. Say that, like, I really hope still that he can develop. And I think that an off season where he's really working on his body is really going to do him a lot of favors because probably his biggest flaw is that he
lacks strength. But there needs to be a lot of work done in a lot of areas for Cody Williams. And right now he looks like a project, and I don't know where what the project looks like when it's completed.
All right, Sarah, last thing for today.
Since you and I last spoke, it became official Alex Jensen hired as the seventeenth head coach in Utah men's basketball history. As a media member that out of a front row seat during Alex's time with the Jazz, what would you say to you fans about what you witnessed as far as his ability to develop talent?
Yeah, I'd say his ability to connect with players is really impressive and that's that's probably one of the biggest attributes about Alex Jensen, not just players, his ability to connect with anyone. He was incredibly kind and generous with his time with me while he was with the Jazz and even after that, you know, seeing him in Dallas, he has continued to be kind and players love him and they gravitate towards him, and they appreciate the wealth
of knowledge that he has. And I think that with any coach that's coming from the NBA ranks and going to the college ranks they can offer that is a really impressive package for any sort of recruit that's looking at where they can learn what it takes to get to the next level. Alex Jensen has that knowledge, and so I think he's going to do great job and I've got a lot of high hopes.
Sarah, thanks for the time, enjoy the weather, and we'll get you back on soon. Okay, all right, talk soon, spent, All right, Sarah Todd desrat News brought to you today by IFA Country Stores. Excuse me, Any drive to the basket begins with the first step. Now look outside. It's like sixty five degrees in clear, So if you've been ignoring your lawn care. Now's the time to dial it in, so our good friends at IFA Country Stores. Any drive to the basket begins with the first step on the court.
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