He's depride of Norwich, Connecticut and an adopted son of Salt Lake City. After forty years with the Utah Jazz, there's no one better to talk some hoops. Richard Smitty Smith is back on the Drive on ESPN seven hundred.
Live in studio for an entire hour.
Looked like he's looks like he's ready to go sailing off Nantucket with a nice collared shirt and a Columbia jacket.
Richard Smith, how are you, sir? You know, you know when I show up, I always got to live up to the East coast, check its reputation. You know that I'm wearing such that's a New England, you know, button down, you know.
Collar blue blue collar, rolls, risen from concrete, all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, I'm wearing sweats. You you literally look like you summer off Cape Cod.
Thank you. Well, you know you have an image you're trying to create. Huh. I don't have an image, so I'm trying to create one. Yeah. It's not going very well, but you know you got to make the effort. I think it's going well.
I think he likes but it's cold, it's April, and it feels like February.
It's cold out and it's cold outside. Hey, but I'm switching to gears for one second. Have you talked anything about your guy Porter, who's doing his best nineteen eighties Bono imitation here with.
The hair or with the hair? No, No, with the So what he does shoulder length? Yeah, we've worked together for a four years now. What he does is he lets it grow out, then he shaves it. Is that his deal?
Yeah?
Or to speak for yourself in here about his little annual, little annual buzz. Yeah, when he got it, when he when he shaves it, it's quite jarring because he'll walk in after the ship after he shaved his head and he looks like he's fourteen years old.
Wild. Yeah, it's funny to say that because Linda and I went to a documentary there was just one night only thing last night on John and Yoko uh living in New York City in nineteen seventy seventy one, okay, eighteen month thing, all during the civil rights movement and everything.
And one of the last pictures I showed in documentary as they were fading out at the end of the film was, you know, kind of a picture montage of John Lennon in the seventies living in New York City leading up to his death in nineteen eighty and one of the pictures I showed, which I had never seen before, was John Lennon with a shaved head, and I'd never seen WHOA where are that picture? And it came and it went, you know, and I had never seen seen
that kind of thing before. But I've heard of people who grow their hair out all winter long, like Porter, and then at some point in the spring they have a right of passage and they go out into the flower fields and they you know, they bend down and they do whatever they do, and they have herbs and stuff and smoke and then and then they shave their head.
And you know, Porter, does that paint an actual picture of how you shave your head.
Mine's more of like a Britney Spears moment right where you go you're going crazy because of.
The hair and the wind and you're just you're over it.
So you have a you have a moment you break down, you you know, attack the paparazzi and police officers inigarhead.
Have you have you in all of your years, have you ever had long, long ish hair.
Well, no, no, I that was that was my deal in uh in college? Oh really? Oh yeah, yeah, you like a flower child. I'll have to show you. I'll have to show you. I I was doing for for a while in college and in the seventies, I was doing my best James Taylor imitation. Oh okay, yeah, okay, So whatever James whenever he had on the latest album cover, that's that's what I was going for.
Okay, Okay, that's not that's not a bad blueprint to follow JT.
I to get success with the ladies.
But I need photo evidence of you with your long flowing well.
A couple of years ago, I went to my fiftieth high school year and this isn't just a great radio for our listeners out there. I go to my my fiftieth high school reunion a few years ago, and I checked into the table for the big dinner that night, and and I look like this with my short hair and whatever, and the one behind the table looks upping. Oh here's this. Oh, here's your your badge. And you know it gives me an ID that has my name
and my high school yearbook picture with it. Right, So that's for everybody to recognize everybody else at the reunion and people you haven't seen in years. And I immediately took it and glanced at it and I handed it back. So I said, oh, you've mistakenly given me someone else that that's that's not me. And she goes, oh, oh, I'm sorry, and then she starts fumbling to try and look and I go, I go, Susan, Susan, that is me. You were just give me that, and she kind of
looked at the picture. She looked at me and looked at the picture, and she goes, oh, that is different. She goes, you know, what do you expect?
It's fifty years later. I think I have my thirty next year. Wow, that's wild to think about. Just Donovan, I think I have my thirty year next year. But let's move on to your pointsbody now gives it. Nobody gives a rip, all right. There are a few things I want to do with you today. But since the season is now officially over for the Utah Jazz, I really don't know how how much meat is on the bone for us to kind of talk about what we
just saw. I just wonder how you digested you were at most, if not all, the home games when you're in town, they lose sixty five games. They go seventeen and sixty five. It is the worst record in the history of the Utah Jazz. Yes, we all know what they're doing and why they're doing it, but how did you digest this year? Somebody that was over there for forty years and saw a lot of winning, What was it like to be in that building and see see the losing on a level that we've never seen it before.
Well, I mean it's difficult, you know, for the franchise itself. I mean they obviously they have new ownership last several years, they have new direction in the front office, they have the new coaching staff, obviously a young new team. Everything and wiped off the board, and so they're doing everything from scratch and trying to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.
It's difficult to watch any team in my opinion, and we've talked about this before, Spence, where the winning doesn't matter, and that they're at actually trying to position themselves, you know, uh into a place where it gives them a better chance at a at a lottery odds and and and uh and and getting a better player through through that process.
It's for me personally, my own perspective, I uh, and I don't like the approach just because I'm not a fan of what I interpret as trying to manipulate the system or game the system, you know, by by purposely losing games and falling behind other people and giving you a better chance. To me, that that just uh goes against with the grain of professional sports is all about your You go out there, you have fans who are paying money, you have sponsors that are paying big money.
You have the people who are the companies who are buying the suites, every everything that's involved from a financial standpoint, and yet you're you're purposely, you know, acting in a way that tells those people, well, we're really not trying to win. So we're not trying to make you feel good about coming to our event tonight. We're we're not really creating, you know, positive vibes in that regard. We're we're out here to try and be as bad as we can, but to try and make it look like
we're trying something. So and it's all in the guys of player development. And we have young guys and we're putting them out there and which I get this part because you have to do at some point some type of mining for gold as it were, you know, like the prospectors in the old days who would go and put their pen in the water and shake it out and and and hopefully they get a gold nugget or two.
And that's what they're doing, you know, with the with their players this season, they're they're putting different guys out there, different lineups, let them play, let them make mistakes, and and eventually make a determination from the club's perspective, who do we think can be a player at some point? Who do we think just doesn't have it? And we have to figure out a way to move on from them.
And that's why you accumulate all these draft picks, because you're just trying to get you know, as Dennis Lindsay used to like to use the phrase, as many bites at the apple as you can. And so you're throwing
guys out there. Well, that guy doesn't look like he's got it, So okay, let's put the next guy out there, and eventually you hope to find a guy or two or three if you're lucky, through that draft process, that trial and error, and then along the way, you try and get something in a trade if that comes up. You're trying to tice a nice free agent to come if you can do that. Those are all parts of
this process that they've been engaged in. But it's very difficult for the fans to watch it because the fans are used to coming to a game, no matter what it is, their son's high school game or the college game, whoever it is, and trying to watch your team put best it's best foot forward to try and win the game you're playing. And the Jazz didn't do that this year. Obviously, they held out guys who were healthy. They got fined
along the way by the NBA for doing that. It's just it's just not a very good look to me for any organization that puts themselves in that position. They're not the only ones who were doing it. You know, several other teams were in that same kind of race, and the Jazz happened to win it by getting the worst record. So we'll see what happens on May twelfth when the lottery lottery balls come up and and and see how that that plays out for them.
So I wanted to ask you a question as it pertains to what we can learn from some of the numbers that were put up by some of the younger players. You know, Kyle Philipowski second half of the season when he got a lot of starts in a lot of minutes, had some really audacious nights with some big time stat lines. And Isaiah Collier and others. I always bring up the
Shreef abdul Raheem example. Antoine Walker before Boston got good, was a guy that had twenty eight a night for teams that won, like twenty games.
DeMarcus Cousins.
There are a lot of players over the years that simply have been able to take advantage of the fact that they got minutes in usage to put up numbers for teams that didn't win. How do we have any idea whether or not Philipowski or Collier or hell I mean, any of them, quite frankly, when the Jazz are good again, hopefully at some point that does happen and they have veteran players.
That are you know, well, or they just have really good players.
And they're actually winning games and they're trying to make the playoffs. Did you see things from these young players that indicate to you that maybe they can be the same players they are for this team for teams that.
Are actually good, if that makes sense. Yeah, it is difficult to judge Spence because when you're put in a position like the Jazz, the team on the floor was put in this this past season, they they actually they did not care about winning. In fact that you know, you can make the argument and you'd never hear them say this, and and rightfully so that they were trying to lose games. They're couching it all under the veil
of of we're in player development. So we're trying to sift through to see who can play and who can't, because as we try and build this team, we got to find out who's a building block, who's a pretender, and who we just don't we just need to move on from because it's not gonna work that kind of thing. So you put him in several different categories, right, Walker Kessler looks like he's a guy, right so that they
think that he's he's one of those guys. Obviously, guys like marking In and and to some lesser extent, Sexton or are proven players who can who can help you on the floor. And so now you're trying to find other guys. Is it? Is it the Collier kid who had some moments, you know, during the year, they made a big deal about him, you know, setting the rookie assist record, you know his uhh this this season, they didn't talk about anything about his turnover rate, uh you know,
and and and to affect games. But that's okay. You're trying to find out, you know, what can he do? Can he be something at some point? Obviously he's got to fix his shot, and he's gotta he's got to figure out a way how to make smart decisions when they're in front of him. But he does have a knack for moving the ball. He has a knack for pushing the ball up the floor, and he has a strong enough body that that he can get, you know, into the lane and make some things happen in transition,
you know, which is a good thing. So they're looking for something like that. You got the George kid, who's played two years now. Probably the jury is still out on his ability to affect winning because he's a natural scorer, but he doesn't do much else. He doesn't make other people better when he's on the floor. In my opinion, his defense is atrocious, So that's a thing that you
have to look at. But again, the way they were playing this year and and not playing necessarily to to be competitive and win, it's hard to know how these players or what their talent level and ability is relative to being in games that matter night in and night out to try and affect winning. But you know, that's the only way you find out is if they're out
there doing it. And sometimes you wish you could throw a guy or two out there with a veteran corps that's competitive, that can win, you know, putting out a guy like, for example, a Shandon Anderson back in the day who was a rookie playing with a Karl Malone and a John Stockton and the Jeff Warners and giving him time with a mature a competitive group to do something and ease into it an NBA career that way. Here they have a few players, but they weren't playing
them on the floor. Marketing In was out for so many games the second half of the year, just holding him out. Kessler didn't play a lot, you know, who can be an effective player, and the guys who are out there, you know, really can't affect winning that much. So that's a that's a tough deal to be able to judge that.
Will Hardy and Justin Zanik addressed the media on that was was a Tuesday of Monday.
I can't remember that for Breakfast Mark this week, Yeah, Monday morning.
They addressed the media, and Will said the same thing about I mean, there was some variants, but Keyante Isaiah and Bryce, Bryce Senseaba Keante George Isaiah Collier. He alluded to all three of them needing to be in much better shape than they were this year.
That that kind of caught me off guard.
I I because I you know, Bryce entered the league with a little bit of Jabari Parker, baby fat little yeah yeah yeah. And I always kind of compared him to Dennis Scott a little bit because Dennis Scott was a guy that could really shoot it from three and never really fully got himself in a great shape. But what do you make of that all three of those young guys, their head coach basically saying like, you guys better come back here in better shape come fall.
Yeah. Well again, Uh, he's got a hammer speaking of a coach, Hardy because nobody's untouchable and and nobody's like a savior, right, and so you don't have to tiptoe around anybody in this group, starting right at the top, whether it's marketing and whether he might be a trade asset or something going forward. Now that you have him under under contract. Kessler, who's the young guy who's gonna be up for a rookie extension. We'll see how they
handle that. But almost all of the roster, they're guys that if they don't do it the way you want them to do it, you just decide you're gonna move on. And that has always been Danny Angel's mantra. Also, Danny doesn't care about anybody. He kind of has a Jerry Sloan type attitude or approach to it, where he say, I don't care who's out there doing the job. I just want you to do the job. And if you don't do it, I'll put in the next guy. It doesn't matter to me because that's what the job is.
And so they have this open, this clean palette. If you will to try and and and tell guys, hey, you got to do this, you got to get better at this. I mean, the center ball kid to me at the moment is a one trick pony. He makes three point shots sometimes, okay, and he has stretchers where where he has trouble, you know, finding the basket. Okay. You know, he's got to get more consistent. But he's also got to show these in better shape that he can use his body to get up on guys to
play defensively. The George kid, you know, I don't know if he'll ever be any kind of a defender. That may be his mantra, you know, but he's young also, but he's got to be able to figure out some other parts of the game other than just creating shots for himself when he gets out there. But you know, look the way the Jazz are right now, Spence, and
the way that they're they're set up. It's just like these other teams that are three of the top teams in the league right now, the teams that did this kind of thing just two and three years ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Houston Rockets, and the Oklahoma City Thunder. We're three of the worst teams in the league league three four years ago there now this year they had
three of the four best records in the NBA. So they flipped the script and how they do it they did it with a mix of draft picks of making the time time uh uh trades that were timely for them. And in the case of Cleveland, obviously getting Donovan Mitchell from the Jazz as a big key in that they signed key free agents who maybe weren't top tier guys
at the time. And I'm speaking specifically of Houston, who brought in a Fred van Vliet from Toronto, and they brought in uh, the kid from Memphis, the guard from from Canada. He's just gave me my name right now, Dylan Brooks. But they brought in him as a tough,
enforcer guy. And they weren't really high profile, top tier free agents, but they were guys they wanted to bring in to fill a certain spot on their ross in terms of leadership uh in Fred van Vleet, and in terms of toughness with Dylan, And then they combined them with draft picks like Shangoon and the Thompson kid and the Jabari Smith kid, and all of a sudden, they've got one of the best records in the league and a nice mix. Right, So that's what that's what those
guys are doing. Obviously. Okay, see did the same thing you know in the draft where they got Chet Holmgren and and they got the the Williams Jalen Williams kid from Santa Clara, And then they mixed that up by making the trade of a big name guy, Paul George at the time, who said, I don't want to be here, so they said, fine, moved them to La turned that into Shay Gilgis and so now they got an MVP level player who nobody knew that was who he was
at the time. He was like a marketing type trade asset that that the Clippers were willing to give up. The Clippers would have never made that move if they could have looked in the crystal ball and seen three years down the road what Shay Gilders Alexander was going to be. Right. But that's the kind of stuff that the Jazz are trying to put themselves in position to be able to do if and when those opportunities present themselves.
So that's that this is just part of that process that they're trying to get through to see if they can make improvements like Cleveland did, like Houston did, like OKC did, in terms of mixing and matching those different components to try and build your team up.
So let me ask you about Lowry and where we find ourselves right now. So the first year Lowry was here twenty twenty two. In twenty twenty three was his All Star year. It's when the All Star Game was here in Salt Lake. And on the roster that year, you know, Mike Conley was his starting point guard, Jordan Clarkson, Chris Dunn, Semoni Fontecio, Dalen Horton, Tucker. I was never a big fan, but a veteran player, Kelly Olynnock, you know,
Colin Sexton, Jared Vanderbilt. He had grown ups around him, namely Mike, who's awesome right before or they traded before they traded Mike away. So I'll never agree with the direction that they went in. I just never will. You know, the half assed measure didn't work. I was never going to. But that year when he actually had veteran NBA players
in Ota be pros. He was about twenty six points a game, nine boards, two assists, shot fifty percent from the floor, almost forty percent from three, and eighty eight percent from the line, All Star sixty six games played.
All right, last year, you're.
Looking at twenty three points eight boards, relatively similar splits as far as.
The shooting goes.
Fifty five games played this year, nineteen points six rebounds. Everything was down. Shooting, splits, rebounds, assists, everything was down for Lowry. And I give him a lot of grace in space because he's been playing with children this year. So year one All Star Lowry Market in twenty six nine almost fifty forty ninety veteran teammates. Year three, Lowry marketingbers all the way down.
Who is he Smitty in the NBA? Who is Lowry Market? Well, he's an excellent player. He's a top level player to me when he has guys around him, and also Spence, you got a factor in somehow, And this is where it always gets murky in the evaluation process. But you also got to look at what is my incentive? What is my motivation for playing night in and night out? When you come to a team the first year, he's
trying to prove himself. He came from a team where it was a mix and match in Cleveland where they were trying to get their footing with other young guys. Now he's with his third team in five years at that time, and he wants to show, you know, hey, I can be I can be a guy in this league.
And he comes in and the Jazz are going through their transition thing, and he got a lot of opportunity and it felt like that, you know, they got out to that ten and three start and it felt like maybe we can still be competitive, you know with this group and and marketing. You know, got in that rhythm and got into that space. Now you fast forward two years later, there's a marked difference in what the team looks like, in what the direction of what they are
trying to do with the group. You're sitting there as a guy. They just made a big commitment to financially in terms of a contract for a forty million a year for five years. They made a big commitment to you. And now all of a sudden, you look around the room, as you say, and there's a bunch of kids in here from high school and college that I'm playing with, and you know, so where we going, Well, you know,
don't don't worry about it. We're just trying to develop guys, and you know, and and and again it's I'm positive, Spence, even though I'm not in the room that no one there has ever said we're trying not to win. Okay, but it's obvious, you know, to anybody who knows anything about the game that the year was also spent on trying to figure out who the other players are and
what the player development track is going to be. So if you're marketing sitting over in the corner, you know, you're saying to yourself, well, you know, so what am I supposed to do? Like I was supposed to score thirty five a game and try and lift us up or what's going on? And so, you know, and they didn't press the issue. The Jazz, you know, the second half of the year, they sat him a lot right
when he was healthy. They got fined for it because the league said, hey, you can't keep doing that, and and the Jazz looked at him kind of cross eyed like whatever, h And they're just going to do it the way that they want to do it. And so with marketing in, I think he's more like that first year jazz guy than he was this year's jazz guy.
I just think he's got to have that motivation, you know, to be with a group that really is going to be competitive and where he feels comfortable that this is a group we can go out and really fight and give it our all, night in and night out. Because when you're losing spence in this league and there's no light at the end to the tunnel, it is a tough road to Oh, no matter what you say, no matter how you preach it, no matter what the fans want to scream about. You know, he's making a lot
of money. He should be doing this and that and the other thing. The bottom line is they're all human and they all approach things a certain way. And for him, I think he's I think he can be a main guy for a team, but he's got to have some help and obviously, as we've seen, he needs a lot of help. Yes he does.
Yes, he does one more thing that will catch a break and we won't do any more jazz because well, you know will And it's it's interesting because you reference like, they'll.
Never say that we're trying to lose.
And as I always say, in sports and in life, do not pay attention to what people say to you, pay attention to what they do.
Right.
So it's clear that by their actions that they were throwing the season away in.
The name of draft capital. We all know what time it is.
But Sarah Todd Desre News asked, Will what type of player, what kind of players would you like to see acquired this offseason? And look, they all are going to handle things pragmatically and politically. They're going to say the right thing. And he said, you know, we just we just we have a lot of talent in the building. Do they have a lot of talent in the building.
I think that jury is out and you know, the defense was uh, you know, I mean statistically is the worst of the league. And so you know, is that talent you know, because one thing you have to look at, Spencer, you have to you have to look in the mirror, and you have to be objective about it. So you either have talent that is able to do it, or you don't have talent and they're not able to do it. Or the third level is you have talent that can do it, but they're not being held accountable to do it.
And so whatever category that falls in, right, and so some of that may have to be on the coaching staff if they're saying, well, we have talent in the room, and you're saying, well, the defense is just it continued to do the same thing, the same thing, the same thing, the same thing, night after night. I watched them. They never changed up the stuff they were doing. And so is that talent that you're not holding accountable? Is it
lack of talent that just can't do it. They can't get over the screen, they can't get through the screen, they can't get back transition defense, they can't stop a guy out at the three point whatever, whatever, whatever. So you have to evaluate all of those things and figure out which category does it fall in, and then you try and figure out your team from there.
Richard Smith live in the studio, will Switch Gears coming up on the other side. I had a really cool experience to attend a meeting today with the Miller families.
Midy worked for the Millers for forty years.
An announcement tomorrow that the Millers are about to take over a majority ownership of Rayel Salt Lake. What was it like to work for the Millers and what is the soccer club in for? And then we'll do a little lottery, and we'll do a little NBA playoff some one more big segment with Smitty coming up on the other side, felt Duke and myself at snacks during the break, smithy see that our station mascot, Duke is in the house, my four year old English scream.
Puppy, who I love.
He got treats and I smashed an uncrustable's peeb and Jay, so hence I'm working through it right now.
And I like the fact that once you bring Duke here that you know, like it is at home with your family, everybody knows who runs the show. Oh yeah, yeah, so I got that right here, so you know what, you.
Know how to get a kick out if he's been coming into work now with me for a while, and you know, at the end of every segment, I have a read to do, I have a commercial to do, and whenever I start reading the commercial, he knows that we're about to break, so he stands up and gets excited because he knows he's about to get a treat.
Is that funny? When I had dogs years and years ago, I had the same kind of response. I had two dogs and a Golden Retriever in a black lab. Wherever they were in the house. As soon as I grabbed my car keys, if I was going to run an errand or something, they would hear that and they would immediately run to the back door, and I would get to the back door and I would look on them, What do you guys do? Where do you think they're
gonna come? Open the door? Let's go, let's go. We know where you're going, you know.
And I always because every time I leave, he gives me the puppy eyes, and then I leave the curtain open, so he looks out the window and watch watches me drive away.
I have tremendous parental guilt. Ye got it, I got it. But there they are life enhancers. Man.
I'll tell you what if you if you're in a tough spot, I would consider a canine because they make a big difference.
All right, it's middy. Had a cool experience today.
Steve Starks invited invited me and some other media members, Gordon Monson from the trip, Aaron Falks and others, uh to uh to sit with the Millers and uh, you know the Miller family. It was Steve Starks, it was Gail, it was Greg and it was Steve Miller. And then they had you know, members of their board there and some attorneys and such. And tomorrow it will be announced that the Millers are taking over the soccer club. They'll be the majority owner of RAYL Salt Lake. Ryan Smith
and his group will exit. They're no longer involved. Of course, basketball hockey, Downtown project a lot on their plate. The Blitzer Group Dave Blitzer, of course, is a very very powerful, well known owner across the landscape of several sports, including pro basketball with the Philadelphia seventy six Ers.
They're going to maintain a stake.
So the club will be part of the Blitzer umbrella. I believe they have seven soccer clubs around the club, so I think that's a good thing. But I just wanted to ask you. You know, I worked for the Millers for seven years. Had a great experience. It was a great company, a great leadership.
You know.
Obviously, Gayo is one of the community gems that we have around here. She very much cares about Utah, very much cares about the community and doing right by the community members, not just her family. But I wanted to ask you what your experience was working for the Millers for forty years. A lot of people at the soccer club probably listening today wondering what it's going to be like now that they're gonna have new owners starting tomorrow.
Well, if the Millers have an active role it and if they set it up as such, you know, it's gonna give a lot of stability to the organization, which you know, being an m l uh an MLS casual follower, being a real Salt Lake fan, uh someone who goes to half a dozen seven eight games during the season with some friends of ours, it's always uh uh. It's been interesting over the years to see, you know, the ebbs and flows and the changes that have that have
taken place, especially on the ownership level. You know, the last few iterations, I think with the Millers coming in, my impression would be that they're gonna bring some stability. They they are the are the community sports community here. They have set the standard all their years of running the jazz of running the bees, which they still have that have now moved out to daybreak uh and they will have a calming influence on how the organization is handled,
how they go about their business. They're very good about hiring people in the sports area, if you will, and letting those people do their job to the best of their ability and giving them the resources to do it and also giving them the backing to make decisions when they have to be made, and so I would expect that they would take the same approach there that they have in their other sports entities, and we just provide that overall feeling that we have people who care about
our community, people have done this before, people who know how to handle these kinds of things. And the greatest part of that spence is the word stability for an organization. We've seen it just this last week in the NBA the New Orleans Pelicans fired their their general manager, David Griffin, who is the victim of so many injuries and guys being out all year, and so you want to throw the general manager under the bus because of that, Okay.
And then just today the Sacramento Kings similar thing where they have an owner who gets really involved and maybe too much. So you know, I'm not there, so I can't say for certain, but they've always had those kind of fingerprints on that organization in that regard where they hired Mike Brown, got him in the playoffs, gave him a new contract, got off to a tough start this year, they fire him the first month of the season, and
now they fire the general manager in Sacramento. You have an over involved owner who thinks they have most of the answers and when something doesn't go right or you hit it. That's why Sacramento, which has a nice core at the moment right they got the playoffs last year, I had a nice little, you know, little spurt there. But they are They're an organization that's had trouble getting
footing for a long time. And that's because if you look over the history, there's a lot of stop and starts, stopping starts because the ownership just can't get on board with the stability part of letting it play out. Let's see what happens and all that. The Millers have done that before. I get the impression that the Jazz and New Jazz ownership with Ryan Smith, that those guys are gonna see through, you know, their process here, whether you like it or not, whether it's yielding results or not
on a timeline that that any of us like. But it looks like they're in it for the long haul to make let the basketball people make those kind of decisions. And I think that's what the Millers will bring in terms of in terms of the way the organization has run to real saw Lake.
The ownership conversation in the world the professional sports has always been fascinating to me because it seems like it's very easy to identify what makes a great owner, what makes a great ownership group, But it's impossible to tell somebody who has used their money to buy a thing to run a thing a certain way when it's theirs right the golden rule. We talked about it on the show all the time. The man with the gold makes
the rules. So it's you know, again, it's not that difficult when it comes to what.
The dynamics look like for a good ownership group.
And as you articulated, it's simply identifying talented people, hiring those people and empowering them to do their jobs, and then get the hell out of their way, provide the resources they need to do their jobs. And look, the buck has to stop somewhere, and so if you need to get involved, if somebody's not doing a good job, you do that. But it's the meddling owners. It's the owners that want to be famous. It's the owners that want to hang out with the players. It's the owners
that want to give the interviews. It's the owner. It's the Jerry Jones effect. It's the owners that want to utilize and more often than not, there they are people that never made the team but want to buy their way into locker room.
Right, And there's one in New York that's still that way.
He is moonlighting now as the opening act for the Eagles on tour. So best of luck to Jimmy Dolan and his kazoo, and hopefully that takes up most of his time because he's been such an atrocious owner for both the hockey team and the basketball team back there.
It's but again, it's it's it's a funny conversation.
To have because to me, it's not hard to identify what makes great owners, but it's impossible to tell these people who have utilized their own money to buy the thing, to run the thing the way you think they should do it.
If that makes sense. No, well, it's you know, I always call it the country club effect Spence. You know, you if you have enough money, you can buy ownership. You can buy you know, a membership into the club. So now you're in the club. So now when you go to the meeting, you have a you have a voice in the meeting of you know, whether we're gonna change something at the clubhouse or at the pool or the golf course or whatever it is. Uh, this isn't
that much different. I was I was playing, uh, playing golf the other day with one of our former executives with the Jazz who was saying, talking about uh ownership meetings back in the day in the NBA and being there with owners and and being in a meeting with the commissioner Stern and talking about you know how you know, some guys were just there at the owners the main
guys themselves for several different teams. They're you know, cajoling and joking and whatnot while they're in a business meeting trying to decide the fate of the NBA or whatever. And it was just another It was just another you know, a reason to have a couple of drinks and and get together and and and you know, joke around because we're at the club. You know, we're the guys in the club. You know, we're you and me, Spence, we were members of the club. Yeah, how about this, you
know whatever. And some guys know how to handle that, and some guys don't. And some guys, you know, feel like this is just you know, look, we've said it before, Spence. Everybody who owns a professional sports franchise in this country, whether it's the NFL, whether it's the NBA, Major League Baseball, none of those owners made their money or have their primary business as the sports team that they own. They all got their money because of something else they did.
Whether now, of course the big wave is it and tech and the tech world and all that, and that's where Ryan Smith, you know, comes from, Mark Cuban comes from, Larry Ellison from from Golden State, comes from Steve Bomer, from the gold Clippers, comes from. These guys come in and they have success in another entity of business, and then somehow, in some fashion they have a feeling that
they know how to run a sports team. Now, some of them are smarter than others, and they know, hey, I just you know, I'm gonna be around it, but I'm gonna let the guys do what they need to do.
Other guys like Mark Cuban, you know, in the book I'm I'm finishing, you know, it just came out on Luka Doncicic by Tim McMahon, who talks about you know, all the time, all the meetings, everything they had in basketball and Mark Cuban, you know, was you know, one of the louder voices in the room and always had the final say as the owner, you know, for good or for bad, right. And so he had people around
him who did all the leg work. And the hard part in any organization is if you have if you have people working hard, people doing their due diligence, doing all of the leg work, all of the grunt work behind the scenes, and they do all that stuff all year long. And then if you have an owner who says, you know, at the in the bottom of the nines with two outs, I want to come in and pin
and I'm going to hit a home run. And and you have an owner like that and who thinks they have the answers, you know, that's where you're run into trouble because you know they haven't done all the homework, they don't know all the stuff that's going on. You have to hire people you can rely on that that you feel have your best interest at heart in terms of running the organization the way you want it done.
And then you really have to, you know, be able to get out of the way and let them do what they want to do based out all the information they have you have to rely on them. The Millers have done that, did a great job of that for over three decades. You know, with the jazz you know, whether it was you know, drafting guys, whether it was like a big trade for the jazz and the jazz world with Darren Williams at the time, you know, who
is our best player? And uh and uh, you know, the Miller family said, well, if that's the Kevin O'Connor, if that's what you think we need to do, you need we need to do, You'll get rid of our best player. You know, that's you know, I don't know how that looks, but okay, that's what you say. And so they, you know, they sign off on it, and they let you do what you feel like you need
to do. And so, you know, the teams that have the stability and have people in place that are allowed to, they're empowered to do the things that they are good at doing and that they work at every single day are the organizations that tend to have a sustained success. Juxtaposed for me, the Larry era when he.
Was because Larry was a big personality and he was front facing and you know, I've heard pretty crazy stories that you know that Frank and Larry and you know, my father and Larry over the years, you know, maybe had some disagreements and such, and you know, Larry was one who was probably a little bit more involved juxtaposed to when Gayo became the face of the Miller organization.
After Larry passed.
And you know, Gail certainly is very sharp, and I'm not saying that she's not, you know, a voice in the room, but was Gail one more to allow space for the Kevin O'Connors and the Dennis Lindsay's of the world to make their decisions in a way that maybe Larry was a little bit more front facing and involved.
Is that fair to say? Yeah? I think that that what Gail did in the meetings that I was a part of over the years, she listened to all the stuff that we had going on as a group, the things that we had laid out that we thought were going to happen. We always used to have a end of the year slash beginning of the year meeting which always happened around the draft, and it was to set the tone for what we think is going to happen in the draft, and right after that usually a week
after is when free agency would start. And then and then it would also be you know, part of the so called trade season in the summertime. So you laid out all the contingencies of what you thought might happen, what we thought we wanted to try and do, what we thought was going to take place in regards to the draft, what we thought might happen in free agency or guys that we were gonna target and free agency, and what the realities of making those kinds of things happen.
All that stuff. We'd have all that stuff laid out all the time, and and then Gail would you know, look at it, and usually she would have she or Greg you know, would have a couple of questions, you know, mostly financially related about, you know, is this gonna put us in this kind of position or is this gonna you know, affect us three years from now or what and all you know, kind of long term type stuff and U and then they would, you know, they would
just say, okay, you know, well, it looks like you gotta lined out and you know what you want to do, and that makes sense. And they they were there to really, in my opinion, to more or less guide the group as a whole, to just make sure that we were acting in the best interests of the or organization in the long term. And if that was if they were felt comfortable that that's what you guys are trying to do and that this makes sense, and you guys have all weighed in and have sorted it all out, then
it makes sense to us. And and uh, and now we just move on. You know. Some places don't don't operate like that. Some places have an owner who who has all the answers and says, well, why don't we
do this, and why don't we do that? And and and then you have to start, you know, spinning your wheels, because what happens is that if there's if you have a situation where they the ownership doesn't support you or has a question about how you're going about your side of the business and you can't get any traction that way, then they're just as likely to move on from you
and bring in the next guy. And that's what we just talked about, you know, in the in the case of New Orleans and and Sacramento in the last week, you know, and for different reasons, but those things happen when you have ownership that doesn't really isn't really convinced that you have a plan that can work over time, and that's what you're always trying to present and have in place for them regarding the overall running of the business.
So a couple of minutes left here, so let's move over and do a little lottery because the Jazz season is over and the NBA playoffs are about to start this weekend playing we'll finish tomorrow. So if you're a Jazz fan, the next exciting date is May the twelfth, fourteen percent chance to get the number one pick. Along with Charlotte and Washington as a result of being the worst team in pro basketball, they will get a top five pick. I want to start with a macro question.
Then we'll hone in on the top and we'll do a little Cooper flag before we say goodbye all of the top five picks. So I know you're going to roll your eyes here, okay, but most of the experts, most of the people that do the mox, most of the people that do this for a living, believe this is a draft that has five really, really good players. So if you're Jazz fan, that's good news. Because you're gonna have a top five pick. There's probably a gap between Trey Johnson and five and some of the other
prospects ahead of Trey. All five of these prospects are either eighteen or nineteen years old. The list of eighteen or nineteen year olds to come into the NBA year one and make a market difference, it's very very short. Lebron Right Garnett came in out of high school and he was good year one, but he didn't turn into the big ticket until later on. You could go back to Moses Malone or Sean Camp. We could have a conversation about the youngsters that actually did play well right away.
But from a team building standpoint, what's the risk of putting all your eggs in the basket of somebody who is still probably confused about making a socks match in the morning because he's still a teenager.
Well, regardless of what the situation is going to be, this is the position that Jazz wanted to be in a year ago. This is what This is the route
they've chosen. This is the path they've gone down all this season, some of it just by the sheer makeup of their roster and not being quite good enough and competitive in a lot of games, some of it by their own design in terms of holding players out and you know, for the sake of so called player development with young guys and hoping they would lose to get
in this position. So whether they got here, you know, and just by the luck of the draw, or they got here by their own, you know, way of working things, whatever it was, they put themselves in the position they wanted to be in. So now they've got a fourteen percent chance it works out. It doesn't work out, as you say, just for our listeners who don't follow this
stuff all the time like we do. The Jazz by having the worst record, the NBA lottery rules dictate they they can do no worse than having the number five pick.
That's what happened to Detroit last year. Detroit had the worst record by five games over the next worst team in the league record wise, and they should have had the first pick because they were the worst team a year ago, but they went because of the way the lottery ended up falling in their regard, went from one to five, so they had the fifth pick instead of the first pick. The Jazz may have the same fate,
may twelfth will tell us that. But but that puts you in an uneasy position because you want to have the first pick is primarily because you want to have the choice of who do we think is the best guy for us going forward. We don't want to have to take the last guy from the leftover of the group, you know, and not have the freedom of choice if
you will. We remember, and I heard you use this reference yesterday and talk about a draft in the past, in the Greg Oden draft, you know, and the Kevin Durant draft, when you're exactly right when you made the statement that every single team in the league would have taken Greg Odin at number one. That was a done deal. That's it. He was the next Tim Duncan, he was the next Shack, he was the next Hakeem whatever you want category you want to put it in. So he's
the guy. And Seattle lost the lottery thing as it did it at that time, ended up picking two, and the Portland got number one. They take Odin. Seattle's left with the leftovers, which happened to be Kevin Durant. Oh, thank you very much. But it works out. So the point being, you never quite know how it's going to go. But you want to be the team that's in the position to make the choice that you want to make that you feel is the way we want to do this. We want to construct this. So is it going to
be if they get the first pick? Is that going to be Cooper flag? Did they look at it and say, well, most teams that are run that are really good have a good lead guard, and so is that the Dylan Harper kid from Rutgers who's all of six five sixty six point guard, shooting guard, can run the NBA type pick and roll, can get in the lane, makes free throws hard, nos, kid, all that stuff. Do you maybe that kid? Maybe that's the guy you know to quote
start a team with. It's gonna be interesting, uh, you know. And the Jazz have no play in that spends by the way, they just have to sit on the sideline and wait. And this is for our fans listening. This is literally a lottery where the ping pong balls come up. It's actually done now, computer generated with numbers, four digit numbers and blah blah blah. But it is literally, you know, a the luck of the draw as to whether you get one, two, three, four or five in the Jazz's case.
So May twelfth, we find out what that is and then and then they they'll have six weeks basically to figure out what direction they want to go in that regard.
All right, Smittie, Well, always great to see you. Uh, we'll see what happens next week. We'll do some more NBA playoffs because it gets wrong right now. Uh, but any exciting plans for are you?
Are you in town? Do we do any here? Spence? I'm here for you as always. We're we're we're heading down a couple of weeks though to uh to uh Saint George for the LPGA tournament. That'll be nice, that'll be fun black down there. Yeah, Black des are going down there to work down there. Linda and I are gonna volunteer and and uh take part in that and see how the Black Desert UH Championship course is doing, and and uh and see our first LPGA tournament, which
would be fun. That's awesome. Still looking for volunteers down there, they are, okay, Bill, looking for people who If anybody listening wants to get involved the Black Desert, you can get on their website and and look at their volunteer opportunities. I think they're we're looking for people to come down. It's a fun thing to do. And uh in the first time ever that the LPGA is holding a main event in the state of Utah, which would be be great for all of our golf fans, no doubt great to see in.
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