KUTV's @DaveFox2 Talkin' Jazz 2025/26 Expectations, Another Ainge + more

Joining me live in studio a fourteen year old teenage girl?

Uh, what what is this? Porter?

What?

What did he make you play? What is this?

So?

Madison beer?

Madison Beer? Also, what do we want familiar? What are we watching on television?

I don't know. It was John Cena hosting wipe Out a minute ago.

Which was no better than what we're watching now. It's some TNT movie. Dave Fox You okay with the headphones, with.

The headphones, but I'm making it work. You think this place could afford?

Okay? Did you say I got half an ear in Madison beer? Madison Beer?

Yeah, fifteen minutes was the name of that song, all right, which is about how long I'm Gonna lie?

That sounded like like Sabrina Carpenter like pop?

What is that?

Well, it's I mean it's it's basically d M. But she's yeah, she's a pop artist. It's still got a couple of really good songs.

When did you get into ed M music?

I've been in my entire life really so weird. I mean possible.

It was new it was called new wave. They didn't have EDM. Well, disguise is a different name. Okay, that's funny. That's a good point.

Now, So you've you've always been in like house music. Yeah, I like house music when you were DJ Dave Fox. And I also like like, you know, eclectic me like ny that kind of thing.

Let's rock a little before you get out of it.

I don't ever give you that you know, or or I'm a big enigma. Yeah, I'm a big enigma guy too.

Okay, so you just run the spectrum.

Yeah, Moby Moby, he does a little bit of everything.

And and to be clear, you're not constantly taking molly and listening to DM house music.

You are drug free?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, I'm just making sure because most people love E d M.

They like the glow sticks and you know all that stuff.

I just like I like the beat. I like the sound of it.

You know.

That's what I'm rocking when I'm driving down the screen.

Well, you're an upbeat, positive guy. I've always been a glass half full, always have you?

Sure? All right? So are you?

I'm always looking forward?

Are you glass full?

About the Utah Jazz offseason project with a new basketball decision maker in charge?

Well, if you're asking me about the hire, I think it's good. I think it's too you know what.

We spent hours after this announcement trying to figure out exactly what the hierarchy was, and Ryan Smith made it very clear that Austin Age is the guy. He an Ange even you know, mentions that he did, you know, wisely mention that everything runs through Ryan. Ultimately he is, you know, after all, the governor of the team. So I and you know, it's not like anybody wants to

I don't know how much.

I think we all know Danny doesn't want to, you know, kill himself working and he shouldn't. He's earned you know, whatever semi retirement you want to call it. Xana's been through some health things, so there's a lot of I mean, this is good, This is really good.

Yeah, I mean the nepotism thing.

In fact, Porter, since Dave brought it up, I want you to take the opportunity to remind Dave and our audience what the official stance is of the Drive as it pertains to nepotism.

Yeah, officially from this show. They tell your sudden this too, Dave. No, nepotism can't win with him?

Don't like it?

Are we are anti nepotism on the show? Okay, but that's fine. But that's what I just said. By the way, my son's an attorney. He's not even in the media, so that's never.

Going to choosing you of nepotism.

I don't think your son's Walton in here anytime. So no, I've seen Andrew on the sideline before.

With some sidelines, Fox not a box.

I just want to be clear that the audience knows the official stance of the Drive as we are anti neputibes.

Well, then I'm guessing you agree with me that there isn't a blatant piece of nepotism on this or do you not agree with me?

No, Dave, it's a bit.

It's a bit because our textures don't really understand that I'm being facetious because I have a famous father.

It's a bit that we do on the show. But no, here's the deal.

Like in my case, I am the famous, you are.

No, here's the deal.

Like Danny's pedigree speaks for itself. He doesn't need me to stand up for him, and Austin's pedigree speaks for itself. He worked for the Boston Celtics for seventeen years. The Boston Celtics have been the pre eminent franchise in pro basketball along with the Lakers, well really forever, but certainly the modern day edition of the Boston Celtics after they made it out of that weird like an Swan Walker phase and started winning championships, Austin's had a front row

He left.

He he has a resume that indicates he has qualified for the job he's been hired for. I find it interesting that apparently Danny and Justin are reporting to Austin. Yeah, that part's interesting. But if he just fires his dad, Dad, you're playing too much golf.

Here's the part I don't get is how and I don't know that much about how companies, you know, break down their levels of leadership. But is it the CEO generally the top guy? Yeah, I had the president. Yeah, but look, here's here's the deal.

Like, get that.

And Porter brought this up earlier. You know, Danny technically retired when he left the Celtics.

That's true, he did.

He wanted to move out here, so you know, I've known the ages of my entire life. Okay, So the deal with Danny is he's not one of these guys that just says, you know, I want time to spend with my family and then goes and travels to Europe for six months out of the year.

Danny is a committed.

Father and grandfather and wanted to move out to Utah because the majority of his kids are here, so he retires from Boston. And also remember he definitely had one heart attack, and I think he may have had two. He had heart issues at the end of his time with Boston, so he left to retire to take care of himself, to move out here to be with his family, and he did not move out here with a plan

I don't know what to tell you.

I don't have an issue like so Ryan said, I didn't tell Danny that I was hiring Austin. No part of me believes that. No part of me believes that for a second. We'll get to the other parts of

It's a great thing altogether.

But again, the bottom line is Austin has a resume that indicates he has qualified for the job.

Yes, and maybe in Danny's case, we're reading too much into the title of CEO. Now They'll take, for instance, a lot of guys who owned big companies, big corporations. The first thing they do when they retire is they become what the chairman of the board. Maybe, well, there isn't a chairman of the board for the Jazz. So maybe CEO is that version of chairman of the board in the case of you know how Ryan sets everything up. But again, getting back to your point, Austin's proven himself,

Uh?

Did they did? The Knicks? Did they fire their coach?

Knicks?

And the Jets?

They fired my guy? They fired my guy?

How much did you really like that guy?

Though? Tom? I love them? Okay? Oh yeah, Tom? Forever he was just assistant.

Why don't they bring back Van Gundy?

He's on the Vegas list of the Vegas released a list of sads, and Jeff is like, but Malone is the highest.

Malone is one and one. He's a New York guy too.

I didn't mean to turn right there on that.

No, no, But ultimately I just think it was a scenario where Danny didn't agree to come work for Ryan unless Ryan agreed that Danny was going to be able to have freedom. And I think that that kind of remains in place, and I think Austin's hiring indicates that

Had and won championships.

Austin Ainge has a championship bring okay, So like his pedigree speaks for itself.

I do wonder where Xanak is with this entire thing, and honestly don't know.

But I think I feel like Xanik after his last medical situation kind of referred to I didn't say he wanted to step back, but he's he's been through a lot as well, and maybe maybe this will help him. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to you know, you there's a lot that goes into this when you're looking for players and you're scouting, and you're in you're in Europe, and you're all over the world, and hey, the more eyeballs you have, the better.

So but I can't, I don't know.

I've never neither of us have had a conversation with Justin to ask him exactly what he feel about that. I thought it was interesting that, well, Danny Ainge was at the press conference yesterday, but he was kind of just in the back. He wasn't up on the podium, and that's the way it should have been. I mean, it was, you know, the guy that hired Austin and Austin. But that's a good question. But I'm not as cynical as you to believe that maybe Ryan didn't tell Danny

Yeah, okay, But again it gets back to the glass half full. That's me.

I'm you know, you're more America's guests, and you know there's nothing wrong with that.

We all have our I wish I believe, we all have our suspicions that Disneyland was a real place and not a theme park day.

I wish I believed in children's fairy tales too.

I just what do you mean it's not a real place. I've been going there my whole life. It is a real place, and it's a lot of fun. I live in the real world.

Okay, so the other part of me will exist where I'm a cynic and you're a glass at full.

Yeah, you think they're not gonna tank next year? You know your buddy asked that question and the answer let me Yeah. I think Austin's answer was like three words, you know, it said, you want to see that, you want to see this here? What's he supposed to say? He can't literally answer a question that's phrased that way with yeah, we're gonna tank again, let's go.

They got fined for taking they're not.

The question that was asked was asked in such a way that that's the only possible response he could have gotten.

Well, I'm not as cynical as you to believe that he had to say what he had to say.

He can't say yeah, we're tanking.

So so, ultimately, just no part of me believes that they are going to put their best foot forward to try to win as many games as they can next year.

It would actually be the direct wrong line to take.

Hey, that part, I agree with you, but I don't begrudge Austin's answer.

No, first of all, I thought it was an awesome SoundBite. I thought it was great.

It was like I dropped them like you're not going to see that next year, and then boom silence, and everybody's like, okay, good a new direction.

But the fact that he invoked the word tanking into the question that made that answer perfectly honest in a way, because there are so many different ways to manipulate your record. And by the way, didn't we learn this year you don't have to finish dead last. Let's be honest.

They just need to be in the bottom eight, right, Yeah, to preserve well.

And that's the issue, I mean, as much as anything else this year, based off of where they're at, based off of what they need, and based off of how far away they are from not just the top teams in the West. I mean, there's not a move they could make to move them from like fifteen to eleven, let alone fifteen to five. It doesn't exist. So based off of how far away they are and how much they need, keeping that draft capital for next year's draft cycle is as big.

Of a priority as anything else that they do this year. It just is, I agree, But there's other ways to do it. First of all, you play every single one of your young guys like they have been the one caveat in all this is what do you do with market Because if Marketing is playing every game and these veterans are playing every game, it's going to be really hard to stay below eight. I'm'm saying that they're going to be a playoff team, but that's going to be

That's the only So if we're going to say that what Austin Ams said yesterday was truthful and he meant it. And the approach now that there's a new boss, okay, because Ryan told us all he's the boss, and the edict from the boss is we are no longer unseerious about competition. We are going to approach this with integrity. We're going to try our best. This roster is too

I don't even know if you want players, you just want picks, really well, you have to really young players.

You're right, you have to.

You have to acquire players because you have to match salaries.

But it also wave them. They're good at that wave lowry no, no, no no. The players that you bring in a giant package of things, players, draft picks, other assets, and then you wave the player you don't want.

Well, okay, but he's he's good enough that you can get three to four picks and probably two to three young players you want to learn about perfect and who knows who the young players are. But if the NBA finds out that the Jazz are willing to move off of lowry marketing, Austin Ainge will receive multiple phone calls from other general managers saying, okay, what do you want? And if if Austin says, okay, let's we'll do four picks, we'll do three unprotected in one swap, and then we

You might have to do something with Walker as well.

I don't think there's any chance they do that.

Well.

Walker's good, Walker's really good. He impacts winning.

So if you're going to do the thing where we are playing our best players every night and we're not making up injuries and we're not after we get fine, we're not saying, okay, watch this Walker Kesseler shooting ten threes a night. If we're not doing any of those corny things anymore and you're trying your best to win games based off the personnel you have, you have to change your personnel.

You're too good.

Because if we are sitting here, Dave, next year at this time and the Jazz have won thirty four games, they're in trouble. And Mark Tatum gets up to the podium and says, and the ninth pick in the NBA draft goes to the Utah Jazz, and that goes to the team that's about to win the title because the Jazz decided they wanted to try really hard this year.

It will step.

It will take the Jazz a couple of steps in the wrong direction. That is first case scenario is what it is.

I completely agree with you on that. And whether we want to call it tanking or roster manipulation. That's gonna be have to be the way they do this because they do not want to go through what they had to do last year, where we all sat there and looked at Larry Mark and looking perfectly healthy and not playing. They have to approach it's a completely different way. And one way would be your right to move him. But it's not just him, by the way. I mean, John

That's my point.

All these veterans, honestly, they in some respects, a lot of these guys got to go.

I think finally you can move off of Collins and Sexton. I don't know about Clarkson just because he's not good anymore. I know everyone loves him, show love, nice guy painted on.

The locker, throw him in, or just keep him on the team for fun.

But his best years are behind him.

But what changes this year And that's why I continue to look at the summer of twenty twenty six as far as the off season that makes sense for them to actually get in play is this year. Collins, Sexton Clarkson are on expiring deals. It's the final year their deal, so instead, like a GM last year is like, wait, you want me to trade for John Collins, I have to pay him twenty five mil this year and twenty five mil.

Next and now they'll pick up an expiring cor.

Now his contract expired, So it actually helps you next off season if you want cap space. Same thing with Sexton, same thing with Clarkson. Clarkson's on the books for fourteen point two, collins on the books for nineteen point one. So you can move off of those contracts even if the players aren't necessarily highly sought after simply because their money.

Expires, and teams love those kind of deals where they're acquiring expired contracts.

The Lowry's isn't I mean they just gave him a max deal. Yeah, he's good enough. You can find a home for him. I mean, he's good enough. You can find a home for him. So that's kind of got to be the play, you know. And then next off season is when they could have potentially seventy million dollars in cap space unless they decide to do this extend Walker. So they have the ability to extend Walker this offseason. Now if you want to move off of Walker, which

The offer sheet.

Gordon played here for four more years before he gave everyone the middle finger and went to Boston. So they could extend Walker unless they've done their calculation believing we're too good with this group if we want to hold onto our draft pick. And also back up what Austin said, mean we're going to try hard this year. They've got to change their person. I don't know think he actually used the phrase try hard this year. But yes, but again, circling all the way back to where this started.

If if the question had been phrased in such way that the word tanking wasn't in it, maybe he gets a little bit different answer. You can't even say roster manipulation because everyone knows that's tanking. It was the way, yeah, ask the question. It was the right way to ask the question. Well maybe, but you weren't going to get an answer with that.

So that's just the way he got an answer. Well, and so if he's telling the truth, if you or you weren't going.

To get a well, I don't want to say honest answer because I'm not putting words in Austin's mouth, but he he doesn't have any other choice to answer that question any other way.

That's that's what I'm saying.

And what I'm saying is if he's telling the truth, they need to change their personnel. Yeah, because right if market In, Kessler, Sexton, and Collins all play seventy and seventy five games, they win thirty to thirty five games this year, I completely agree with the worst place to be.

And if they had, if they had played them all last year, they they probably would have won upwards of thirty. I would think the year before they won nearly that they did.

They went over that. So yeah, I'm with I'm one hundred percent with you.

And you know where they drafted the year before tenth Yeah, and you know where that would go this year? Oklahoma, who's about to win the championship, and that tenth pick hasn't worked out so well. We'll see where that goes. But I mean, frankly, their next two picks worked out better. We're going to find out in the next thirty to forty five days.

We'll see exactly what the new president is made of when he starts shaking things up.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

I guarantee three words you will not hear at his mouth big game hunting.

No.

I think I'll steer clear of that. No way, Austin, if you're listening, you should fire your dad.

Ud not say that, all right?

You reference the.

You reference the overly irrational, emotional, ridiculously misguided decision of the worst owner in pro sports to fire Tom Thibbadeau today. It's an example of why the Knicks have been irrelevant for twenty five years because they make these in the moment, irrational decisions based off of emotion that you're feeling right now instead of having a big picture point of view. So juxtapose that to what Ryan's decided to do with the current iteration of the Jazz.

The bottom line is this, Dave, you have to have players. You have to have horses. Knicks have players.

The Jazz tone, but what Ryan has done is locked in a head coach through twenty thirty, a front office that now is locked in as well, and it takes away the ambiguity and the unknown nature of who's calling the shots in the way that the Knicks have simply just allowed the decisions to be to and fro from the win, firing good coaches all the time. So there is that while you need players, at least the Jazz have a coaching staff and a front office that is

Well, you answered your own question perfectly right there, because you look at what here, here's the difference. You got the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals with an opportunity to go to the NBA Championship Series, firing a coach, and then a team with the absolute worst record in the NBA re signing their coach to an extension, and

I mean, what an awful job they did of running that thing.

So and it also tells you that Ryan is confident in his front office and what they're going to do, and that he knows within a few years they'll be competitive, they'll start being competitive, and he wants to make sure that guy is there running it. I don't know what the world the Knicks are doing, other than you may end up with an even better coach.

Well, it's just it's an example of an owner that's an idiot, and that's who Jim Dolan is. And hopefully Ryan's decision. Will Hardy's won thirty four percent of his games. He has a nine year runway. Tom Thibodeau just won fifty games back to back and went to the Eastern Conference Finals playoffs four or five years and one Coach of the Year and he got fired.

Can you imagine if I mean, if Will Hardy wasn't retained, he'd be instantly highable. Yeah, because people understand what he really is about. But the Jazz are smarter than that, Yeah, they are, so all.

Right, David, are you wearing that on TV tonight.

You look change, I'll change.

I know you should wear that.

I mean sometimes I can't get away with that like you can. I have to look more respectable.

It's a little stuffy in there with the suits of times.

But I'm more a hoodie. A couple months ago in the winter, I should have saved that for a night you were on with me. Are we hoody with a sport code?

Are we warm enough to enter the day fox and shorts phase?

Yeah? I do that quite a bit, but I don't do it if it's a show like what you and I are doing tonight, where you can see my leg.

Nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants to see that. What's coming up? On five questions?

I don't want to reveal all the five questions, but I will say we have discussed at least two of them.

Here.

We're gonna throw in an r SO question, a golf question. We had a couple of locals.

By the way, Zach Blair in press in summer, he's both qualified for the US Open. What about doctor Freestone, Congrats, doctor freestng is doing good.

Texted him the other day on an issue and he got right.

Backed do you want to share what the issue was on air or we don't want but you're you're healthier, good to go.

Yeah, all right, I'll see you a little bit the Great Day Fox.

I'll be on TV with Dave tonight at ten thirty five CAM Why You Five Questions with Spencer