The throwback to the old villain Spence days is what this is little YouTube for you on a Monday afternoon.
We've got Ted Robinson from the.
PAC twelve network, well formerly of the PAC twelve network. He'll stop body do some college football is the house of the NCAA settlement was pushed across the line on Friday. If you missed Eddie Gill a lot of fun catching up with Eddie Guild today. And then Rob Perez batted leadoff, but in the cleanup spot because that's where we save the big bats. Richard Smitty Smith forty years with the Jazz front Office.
I love Smitty. Happy Monday. How are you sir?
Did you got me in here ahead of Ted Robinson? Because there's no way I am following that guy. He's the best on a radio show. He is the absolute top of the mountain. I've admired him from Afar for so long, for all the stuff he does in all the areas he covers in the world of sports. He's just he's just terrific. And you know so he's he's a great get for you guys. Whenever you can get him on. He's terrific.
And I would imagine with Ted, we'll talk a little rolling Arrows Grand Slam Final for the ages.
You're a tennis guy, we'll do mostly basketball.
But I was telling you off air, man, when I see shot making like that at the highest, it's just so wildly impressive.
And you you watched the whole.
Thing Alcaaz and Center yesterday. I was at five, said that was you know, Cinner was so good early and and Alcaraz just hung in and hung in.
And those two guys.
Alcoraz is twenty two years old, Sinner's twenty three, coming off the suspension that he had in the in the late winter, early spring, and and uh, and just getting right back into it in a major like that. He's, Uh, those guys will be battling for it for a lot of years with a couple of young guys who are on the way on the way up, I think, and and uh, but that's gonna that's gonna be fun to watch those guys.
You know, it's very impressive.
And you know, I my generation, you know, I was raised right in the sampras Agacy American tennis. You know, uh, what, why don't you think we have developed any of these young I mean we were talking about some of the American players. But the best American excuse me, the best male tennis players in the world right now, I don't feel like any of them reside in the United States.
Yeah, well, the last big boy, really you have to go back almost twenty years with Andy Roddick was the last guy who was really right in that top level group and around in terms of world class players.
And I don't know. I think maybe it's.
Maybe in our country we have too many sports, too many options, too many things the people get involved in. And it seems like a lot of kids are getting involved in specialization whatever it is they think they're good at, or their parents think they're good at, when they're twelve or thirteen or fourteen. And you know how many how many kids nowadays? And I don't this is a rhetorical question, but I don't know how many kids nowadays in high
school play multiple sports. Like when I grew up, you know, you played football or golf or something in the fall, and then you played basketball in the winter, and then you played baseball in the spring or soccer or whatever. And now they just play one sport when they get to high school, and it's it's fascinating to me that that the kids are doing that at such a young age.
I don't know, you know, some of some of the foreign countries over in Europe, especially Skinnavan countries are more better ahead of us in terms of researching all that stuff and all the cross training benefits of doing different things, and and you know, maybe it's just guys, you know, don't get into tennis as much early on and then they just kind of drift away from it.
Well, it feels like like the ecosystem surrounding sports for kids have really changed. Where if you want your child to be in a prism and paradigm and have the attention of like a head coach in high school, he needs to be playing AAU at ten for the AAU team that's tied to the coach, or he needs to be, you know, focusing on one sport when he's so young.
And you know, I didn't raise my son that way.
Connor ended up playing soccer in high school, but he tried basketball, golf, all these things, and like you, my sport.
Was predicated on the season.
I did end up only playing basketball my final two years in high school.
Prior to that, it's football in the fall.
It was basketball in the winter, then it was lacrosse in the spring, and I just feel like now parents are kind of I don't know if pressure.
Is the red term.
It may be motivated if they think they have a kid who can play high school basketball or whatever and.
Maybe do something beyond it.
It feels like they only hone in on that one sport to give the kid the best best chance at walking that path where he can make teams.
I mean, it feels like it's changed that way.
Yeah, you know, I learned spence a while ago. A good friend of mine came through you with the twelve year old son, and he's a very good athlete at that time, like doing a lot of different things, and they were perplexed because they were being pressured by the respective coaches of the different sports, like, hey, hey, your son's got you gotta decide what he's gonna do because he can't do everything because we in our sport, whichever
one it was, we go year round. We practice, and we travel and we do tournaments and we have our own schedule.
And league or whatever.
So you know, he can't play different sports because he's gonna have to practice, he's gonna have to and that's coming from these recreational slash volunteer coaches, from the dad who sits on the couch every night and watches ESPN and thinks he can do something. So then he's going out and he thinks he's running his twelve year old you know, soccer team or whatever, you know, like the
RSL or something. I mean, you know, it's just crazy and and and the kids get it, you know, and the kids are pressured like, you know, well, if you want to play comp soccer, you want to play camp basketball, you have to choose because you can't do both because you know, because of the pressure that those teams are
putting on them. And so sometimes I wonder if the kids really, you know, are being directed in that way by people other than their family, of the people who have the most interest in their own own development.
Yeah, and the other thing Smitty that I think has changed recently that probably adds an extra layer of the parental pressure because ultimately, like I coached my son's junior jazz team for a few years, and it's always the parents that ruined the experience, especially when they're six, seven, eight years old. These kids just want have fun, and
their kids they should just have fun. But now with the ability to make real money in college, it's no longer like, oh, maybe my son can earn a scholarship and we can save money that way and he can still go to school. Or now it's mom and dad are seeing you know, dollar bills, and they're seeing dollar signs in their eyes, like, Okay, we've got a young man who's shown a little promise and if he can
elevate himself to becoming a college athlete. Now there's millions of dollars being made from these kids in college, which probably ups the ante for a lot of the parents that selfishly believe their kid is the next Tiger Woods or whatever.
Right and and so so in my lifetime, how much that's that scale has slid backwards from being a so called professional at the you know, at the real professional level when you're in your twenties and whatever the sport is, and then backing up to to college right in recent years, and now that that's trickling back to high school where kids are being you know, being directed in certain areas you know, to go to, like you know, the the academy that's in Atlanta that's set up for the high
school kids to go there and play and develop, you know as juniors or seniors and being paid to go to those schools, you know, to do that over time. Elite is who I'm referring to. And and you know, or you can go to IMG academy and get paid but you know, specialized training. But now how far does that keep sliding back?
Do you know?
When does it stop? Or does it when eventually it gets like the junior high level. And now we're we're directing kids, you know, coming out of sixth grade to go in a certain direction or what have you.
In Europe, I would say this.
In Europe they have all these youth academies that are high school age kids. And if you're identified in a sport, whether it's soccer, basketball, individual sports, tennis, you know, you can go to an academy that specializes in that when you're thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old.
That's what you know.
Luka Doncic did from Slovenia. He was identified at a fourteen year old and was taken by Real Madrid and Spain to move from Slovenia to Spain to another country at fourteen years old to start playing so called professional basketball training for that and they do that and of course that's that's a model's us forever in the soccer world, all around the world, you know, and how much money the European soccer clubs, especially the English Premier League clubs
put into scouting and development of guys where they just pour money into it hand over fist all over the world in hopes of finding the one guy or the two guys or whatever that are going to pan out ten years from now and be one of our star players. And you know that, you know how much of that is starting to creep into you know, the American system and the university collegiate system, which is which is fascinating, fascinating right now at this point in time.
Yeah, and you hear coach wit.
I believe Morgan has talked about this too. Kyle oftentimes has talked about how when he's recruiting his high school football prospects he very much appreciates when they're versed in other sports and play other things and don't only do football. And look, there's not what this is. None of this is linear Australia. There's not one way to do any
of it. But I think you know, there are so many skills you can ascertain from playing other sports that do translate to the one sport that you eventually land on.
I don't know, I don't love that.
A lot of these kids, even you know, when they're so young, are just basically told like you've got to pick one thing and do that one thing. I appreciated the lessons I learned playing other sports, you know what I mean.
Well, when you do that in your tunnel vision into one sport, you know, you as a kid, you're thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old, no matter what people are saying to you, there comes a time when internally, you know, you get to a point where you're thinking, well, I guess I'm just doing this one thing because it's supposed to take me somewhere, you know, and a financial or career oriented status or projection, rather than I'm doing it to have fun and to be involved and to you know, to
enjoy being around the other kids my age and all, which is what it was supposed to be. Right now, it's now it's a business down to that level, which is which to me is a little a little scary. If you really pull back from thirty thousand feet and look at what we're doing in this country just in general, in our society with a lot of facets of our life.
That part, to me, is going to be interesting years from now when we reflect back on this era era and we look and see what we were doing to the young kids in that regard, and and how how the the purpose of those endeavors changed over the years.
Sure, sure, all right, let's move over. We'll do some jazz in our second segment. Well, we'll do a little jazz here, but I want to bring in the NBA finals and kind of tie it all together a little bit.
You know.
It's interesting he consider that both Indiana and Oklahoma City, UH turned Paul George into their franchise pillars in a roundabout way. Indiana and Paul George, they had him for Demo Sabonis. Then they trade Sabonis to the Kings and they land Halliburton. Oklahoma City turns Paul George into Jay Gilgris Alexander five draft picks, one of who was turned
into Jalen Williams. And so now you have these two teams whose cornerstones were a direct result of a trade the front office made for a superstar that they jettisoned.
Did the Jazz get enough for Donovan?
You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, and maybe at the time, Paul George was thought to be a better asset than Donovan and Lowry's a very nice player. But if you're gonna do what Indiana and Oklahoma City did with Paul George and what the Jazz did with Donovan, you better find something pretty special in return.
Well, Paul.
The Paul George thing is interesting because in both of those situations, he really he really cornered the organization and told him he wanted out right, you know. So in Indiana he threatened he wasn't going to re sign, so they traded him to Okay See.
In Okay See, he just.
Bluntly told him I want out of here and and I'm gonna sulk and you know, I'm not gonna, you know, be a good boy or whatever if if you don't do this, and you know, in both organizations, you know felt like, well we're back in the corner. We got to do something whatever. Uh And Okay, see's a point. Look,
whether they were smart, whether they got lucky. I think Sam Presty, who's you know, obviously one of the the great general managers and in NBA history really when you look at what he's done over the years, and okay see and and even his work before in San Antonio when he first got into the league. But he you know, he may be the first one to tell you that, hey, look, you know, we had to make the trade for Paul George. We got a bunch of stuff from from the Clippers.
Paul George was the big asset. Shay Gil just that we wanted him put in the deal. They said, Okay, do the Clippers think that s g A would be the player he's become? Would they have traded them right? I mean, of course they wouldn't. So the fair question on the flip side is, did ok see think he could become that type of player? I don't think so. I think he was a nice player. They had to make a deal. They did the deal. He came in, he blew up. Okay, we look good. Okay, we look
like we're pretty smart. You know, you know, similar to the Jazz, you know, several years old, drafting Donovan Mitchell at thirteen or Rudy Gobert twenty seven, and and you know, you look pretty good when they show up and they develop into what they are. And some of it is you know, you and your projection and how you evaluate players, and some of it is luck and up to the players to do what they do. I mean, Frank Layton
was always great about, you know, deferring. You know, whenever that John stocked in the draft and in the eighty four would come up and they got stocked in at sixteen, and they said, oh, how do you know he's gonna be such a great player, And and you know, Frank Lane would always quickly say, hey, if we knew he was gonna be such a great play, we were to trade it up to get him, because you know, when I can wait till sixteen to get them, you know,
so nobody knows those things. So there's only there's only a few players now and then everybody you know, whether it's Shack or whether it's Duncan, or whether it's Wembin Yama, you know, even you know, even Yannis Jokic. Those guys, those guys weren't that coming in in the door. They were like, yeah, we hope they can do something. Yeah, we'll see, we'll work with them whatever. And then they you know, much to their their their credit, they blow up and they become who they are, and so it
makes you look good as an organization. And I know the Jazz are trying to latch onto somebody who they can, you know, maybe get in that regard at some point. I don't think they've got it yet, but they're trying to keep taking swings at it and trying to find the next guy who may jump out at him. And and they continue to do that, and so far, you know,
they haven't hit on it. And and you know, again s as we've always said, some of it is stuff you do, and some of his stuff you plan and you can execute based on your acumen and doing so. And then some of it is just luck or something that falls in your lap. And you've got to be able to to to be ready to accept that when it when it comes your way. And you know, the Jazz so far are still treading water in that regard.
I really am genuinely curious how history will look at the Mitchell deal. And again, whether it's the Donovan trade or the Rudy trade. I said it at the time, I'll continue to say, we can't accurately analyze it until all the picks have been conveyed and we see who the Jazz are able to draft and whether or not that works. So far, the picks that have been conveyed and the opportunities that Jazz have had, I think they've been swings and misses.
I think it's only fair to say so.
I just have to wonder every time we talk about this situation with the Mitchell stuff, juxtaposed to what both Indiana and OKC were able to turn Paul George into. Larry's a nice piece, but he's not SGA and he's not you know, he's not a cornerstone.
He's a good player.
If you're going to trade a first team All NBA guy in his mid twenties, you better get something pretty special, bet Well.
And that's the thing, Spence, what you're doing at that time.
You're making the decision as an organization, which the Jazz did, and the really the new Jazz ownership group headed up by Ryan Smith, made the decision that they wanted to move on from all star level players who were just coming into their prime and who were signed and were under contract for several more years. They had something that was in place that was competitive and you know, and one of the better teams in the league. Obviously, the year before they moved those guys, they had the best
in the NBA. But you're you're talking about making the decision to move guys who are proven. This guy can do it, he's done it. We got him, we got him under contract. Why are we moving him? You know that kind of thing. And so they made the decision to move him. They made the decision to do that with for a bunch of guys that, Okay, we don't know what any of these guys are. Okay, marketing comes in, good player, all star level player. Okay, a bunch of
draft picks. Don't know who they are. The guys who are gonna be those draft picks are still in high school right now, or you know something. And so we're just we're just waiting to see, you know, when that bus comes by, you know who it drops off in our lap and how that works out. But that's always
the debate, Spence, when you're getting those situations. We have a proven commodity, and we have something in our hand that we control and we know that it works, and we're willing to move on from that for something that we don't know what we have, and we don't know if.
It's gonna work that.
That is the interesting dichotomy there, because that is a tough to me, that's a tough decision, you know, to get into making if you're going to trade one for the other. And you know so far, you know, the the jury's still out, and you know you can argue, you know, the results of Gobert, Mitchell and the other guys who they moved on from, whether it's Mike Conley, and you know who's near the end of it, Joe Ingles,
who certainly is probably at the end of it. And you know with those guys by Danovich and all those guys, you know they were they were certainly very good players in that group that they had, and you know that was the decision that was made. Now the Jazz are dealing with that.
So two separate NBA sources, uh Bill Simmons in addition tomorrow Stein, have mentioned written or spoken of the possibility of Utah actively taking phone calls on Larry actively talking
to teams about trading Larry. Marketing twenty eight years old, be twenty nine next year at the end of next to next season, which certainly is not old, but it could be a scenario where maybe he just doesn't fit the timeline of what they're trying to build, as they've got a couple of first rounders this year, a bunch of young players on the roster, So help us understand Smitty kind of the thought exercises that go into a decision like that if they do decide to move off
of him, just based off of maybe his desire to try to win games somewhere else and the Jazz desire to maybe continue to be set to go extremely young. No idea whether or not this is going to happen. These are just discussions that are being had. So if the Jazz are actively taking phone calls on Larry, what are the exercises they're going through.
Is to make the right decision for the club.
Yeah, well they have to do that, Spence, that's their responsibility. Austin and is now the president basketball operations. You know he's going to be the point man going forward for all that kind of stuff. When you're the team that's the worst record in the league, you have nothing to hang your hat on in terms of protecting something we have. In other words, whatever you have, you like it. It's
it's really high on the chart. It's so so wherever it lands on the landscape, it's not helping you win games, so it doesn't matter. So so it's you know, Larry market and now that he's trade eligible because of the contract he signed last year, so now they can look and see if he has value to other teams. What you're really doing in that regard is a you're not subtracting much from your group, right because your group only won seventeen games last year, and obviously they held him
out on purpose a lot. They got fined by the league for it, and all those those kinds of things, and the tanking and the trade and the draft scenario thing. But you know they have to be if they're not accepting calls that they should also be making calls to
see if there's any interest. Because the other part of that equation, which is a big part that plays into expenses, is he's going to be making in the neighborhood forty five million, and so you want to pay a guy forty five million on a team that's not going anywhere at the moment and isn't winning games, you might as well look to see what you can turn that into to be able to recalibrate, reset, spend less money somewhere else, and then look at what your whole landscape is going
to be. I think bringing Austin Ainge into the equation for me, means that they've decided that they're going to, you know, open all those doors and talk to everybody who wants to talk and put it all up on the wall and have discussions, ongoing discussions with twenty nine other teams to see who's offering and what and who has an in trust in what and whatever, because you
you have to. You have to figure out something to get this train going forward, and whatever it takes, that's what we have to entertain and and market In is your best player at the moment and your most marketable one, along with maybe Kessler maybe a little more marketable because.
He's younger and less money.
But those guys, I don't think anything can be off the table because of the situation that you've put yourself in.
Yeah, and these are not easy decisions to make, obviously when you have a player that you like an awful lot. But you know, the last thing before we catch a break, the timeline analyzation of roster construction is very much a real thing, And I don't know how much of that includes. I mean, when you guys really had the Mitchell and Cobert group ticking and you were winning a lot of games. I'm trying to analyze it through the prism of like when is Lebron going to retire? And when does Durant
leave the Warriors? And when is Steph not Steph anymore? Whatever it is, and then when that window opens, you have to be ready to walk through it.
And before we catch a break.
How do you think the Jazz are analyzing the landscape of basketball right now? And is that something they're utilizing to bring color and context into their process and decision making. Oklahoma City has two players in their rotation that are over twenty six. It's Caruso and Kendrick Williams just turn thirty, and they've got their guys signed. They also have draft assets in capital to continue to add pieces to the core that they want to keep together. So will they
have to make some economic decisions at some point? Certainly you always bring up the OKAC team with Harden and Durant and Westbrook that at some point the rubber was going to meet the road, and it did, and it will for them too, But it doesn't feel like it's gonna meet the road anytime soon. Like I think they're gonna win it this year and have something to say about it for the next four or five years, assuming
full health. So before we catch a break, how much do teams analyze like Okay, well, okase's here, we're in this space. Uh, maybe in four or five years when they're done with this, we like, do you understand what.
That?
That's what That's what we would do all the time. We always had a three to five year plan, uh that we looked at for every team of the league, and so we had we would always have that laid
out as to what we thought was gonna happen. Now, there's certain things you can project, like you know, in two years, this guy is gonna be up for a either a rookie extension or this guy's gonna be up for a second contract, and he's playing at a certain level, so he's gonna get X amount of money, and whether the team likes him and wants to keep him at that number or whether they're going to try and move him before. Those are always projections and guesses you're making
based on your knowledge of the league. And how each individual team operates. You're looking at what you think your group is gonna be three, four or five years from now, and how can we position ourselves to be competitive. But then there's always spens that area, there's always a gray area twenty percent, thirty percent, forty percent. It's it's always fluctuating of stuff that's just gonna come out of the blue and hit you in the face, that that that
you don't expect. Whether it's uh, you know, Giannis decides tomorrow, I definitely want out of Milwaukee whatever whatever it is. Or Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving and James Harden put together this big three in Brooklyn and they're going to run the league for years, and they play sixteen total games together, and then COVID hits and that was part
of it. But then one, you know, one domino fell and another one another one all of a sudden, that thing just fizzles out, and all those guys are somewhere else now, you know. And so you can make those kind of projections, but you you can't control those kinds of things. But you try and make educated guesses and and and based decisions on what you think may happen in what position you want to put your your group in.
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All right, we got on to te Ted Robinson's gonna roll by.
We'll do some college football with Ted, probably some rolling Garo's French Open final conversation for the massive heavyweight Blow by Blow tennis match.
Over the weekend.
Then we'll get to the five o'clock hour of the program, and then after that we'll say an eiden time for Game three of the Stanley Cup Final Florida Edmonton series is tied to one game apiece.
Both games have gone overtime. It's been a lot of fun.
But one more segment with our guy Richard Smith live in studio. All right, Smittie, we are just a few weeks away from the NBA Draft, and so we'll end this segment with some finals conversation. But before we get there, what's going on right now with the Jazz front office and their preparations for the draft. They currently have two first round picks two second round picks. That could change, but that's where they're at. So with just a few
weeks left before its decision time. With a big decision to make whether they stay at five or utilize it as an asset. Who knows, But what's going on right nowt behind closed doors as they're prepared for the draft.
Well, it's interesting, Expens's because of the situation the Jazz find themselves in. Now they've got four picks, and those picks are all over they're spread all over the board, so they've got five and twenty one, and then they've got forty three and fifty three. So they're looking at
a whole slew of guys. I don't know what they're doing specifically with workouts and interviews now, I know back in the day, you know, in this scenario, we would literally bring in eighty ninety one hundred guys and work them out and get a hold of everybody and do interviews. You know, you're working with other teams on travel arrangement. So a player is going to Denver on Tuesday and
they've got another workout scheduled at Golden State on Friday. Hey, can we jump in and grab them and have them stop off in Salt Lake on Thursday and work them out and get a chance to visit with them and that kind of thing. You can only have six guys a maximum on the floor at one time for a workout. You can bring in more than that, but then you have to split the workouts and you have to do like a morning afternoon thing. So you you can set
that up. You do interviews, you do personality profiles, you do some measurement, some uh, you know, you might do physical depending on whether they were in the Chicago pre draft combine or not. So you're getting all those all those boxes checked with all the guys. You might have an interest in the guys that you're that you're looking at.
Then when you don't have a workout and you don't have guys in you're in the in the theater at the practice facility over Designs Bank Basketball Campus, you're watching film.
You're with your group of guys.
You're talking about, you know, each guy individually, you're ranking guys. You're at some point you go through an exercise where okay, you know, everybody ranked their top ten point guards, whatever you got, and we compile them, you put them together. You talk about that, and you kind of you know, you feel that through and and and then you talk about, okay, how about the top ten guys period, regardless of position and whatever it is, and and and it's a it's a major organizational process.
But we always used to have the the goal.
Uh.
And this is going way back to when when Scott laden was was the GM and then carried through with Kevin O'Connor and Dennis Lindsay who were very process oriented guys, and we would have all that stuff laid out and and sorted out and talked about and argued about and debated about all the way up to the day before the draft because we would want to have everything in line with what we want to try and do or what our different options would be going into draft day.
So on draft day we weren't debating, we weren't arguing, we weren't pointing fingers about. You know, you said this, I thought we were gonna go with that guy. Why why is this guy in the picture?
Whatever?
You've got all that stuff, it's already hashed out before. So now on draft day you can calmly execute what your plan is, whether it's Plan A, Plan B, Plan OPQ, whatever it is, and put that into action. And you've already thought those things through. So right now is the heavy lifting time for the personnel people and not added laya to it, Spenser this year is they bring in
Austin Ainge at this critical time. And Austin Ainge is going to have certain ways that he does he organizes it, how he processes it, how he wants the flow of the information or of the evaluation and discussion process to go. So the guys who have been there and working on this stuff all year long, all of a sudden have a new boss, if you will, in the room saying, oh, yeah, we're not doing it like that anymore. Now we're going
to do it this way. Oh okay, and we've got what if we got we've got fifteen days or seventeen days or whatever till we do that. Okay, all right, And you've got to be able to you know, this is the shuck and jive time. So you've got to be able to react, read, and react and figure out
how you're gonna go about that business. And so that's gonna be tricky for them because it's one thing to have a process in place, but then to have someone come in like in this and you know, proverbially, and you know, the relief pitcher in the eighth inning, and now you got to go with what he's bringing to the table.
You know that that adds another wrinkle to it.
I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to go there next. And I look, I I don't know how Austin operates. I don't know what his personal ethos or way of going about This is no clue. He's worked in Boston for seventeen years, fourteen in the front office, three as a g leadue coach, certainly worked for his dad,
and then worked alongside Brad Stevens. So you know, two guys that are very well respected in an organization that has had a ton of success, including a recent championship, and maybe would have won it again if they could have stayed healthy this year. But what sort of dynamic because you reference the guys that have been over there doing the groundwork, scouting players, going to games, and it's you know, Spide is not just that they brought Austin in.
They bring him in and Ryan said, he's the guy calling the shots now. So what sort of complication or whatever you want to label it as, does that bring to a group when you've been doing the work and all of a sudden there's a guy that's not just been brought in as an addition to your staff, he's brought in and he's the boss.
What he says goes No.
That's a big deal because now all year long, you've been in a certain rhythm, you've had a certain schedule, you've been following, you've been discussing with your group all along.
You know what your.
Goals, what you're pinpointing, what your evaluation points are as you go out to watch the co college guys, as you go out to watch the G League guys for you know, potential ad INDs during the summer as free agents,
what you're looking at overseas on the international market. All those things you're trying to put together, and you're trying to figure out where the different pieces lay and how do we structure this, and who do we value and and and your group has been having these discussions all along. So back in November, December, January, you've been having meetings. Hey, I just got off the road and I saw these three guys. Can we have a meeting tomorrow to discuss
these guys? Come in Boom boom boom. Hey Spence, you better get out next the next couple of weeks and see those those two guys, because I think they're going to be in the mix for something okay, you know whatever.
So you got all of that.
Organization, all of those moving parts going on, and you've had a certain rhythm, and you've had certain voices in the room who have been directing that action. And then all of a sudden last week, the the owner comes in and goes, oh, by the way, you know, we
got a new boss. And here he is, and everybody good luck, and everybody's going okay, and uh, you know, and they know Austin Ainge and they know, you know, the guys know him to different levels, but you know, they know who he is and you know, respect who he you know what he's bringing to the table. But we don't know what his how he reacts. He we
don't know how he wants to organize things. We don't know if he wants to you know, start from A and go to Z, if he wants to start over in this area and and and and organize it that way, or how he sees it. Because look, he's been doing that stuff with the Celtics all year long, so he has a certain place in that process where his head
is at and how he sees these guys. So he may come into a meeting the first day and go, hey, let's talk about uh, you know, Jimmy Jones from so and so, and somebody goes, Jimmy Jones, we haven't, we didn't scout him. He's he's not good enough. What do you mean he's not gonna know, I've been watching him all year.
You know.
You can have those kinds of discussions, and so now you're going, Okay, we haven't talked about Jimmy Jones all year, and now this guy's coming in and saying he's been following Jimmy Jones all year and he's really a legitimate problem. So you have those kinds of things that can come up.
So you're trying to read through all of that, and the guys who have been doing all that that groundwork for you all year long, you know, are now suddenly they're trying to reorganize their notes, their information, what they've set up as things that they thought were going to be important at this at this point in time in the process and reconfiguring what those are based on what
the boss is now saying. And so that's gonna be the interesting part of that, because Austin Ainge is gonna come in with his own uh set of guys and and priorities and what he sees from Afar. He's been
watching the jazz from Afar obviously with his dad. You know, he's pretty well acquainted with what the where the Jazz are at this this this juncture and uh and so you know he's got an opinion I'm sure about Hey, you guys, uh, you guys really need a B and C. And the guys in the room are going, well, we know that, but we also need D, E and F and so what what are we prioritizing. So those are
big discussions. This is a tough time of the year, you know, to do this, not quite sure the impetus of that on the ownership level of why to do it, you know, three weeks before the draft, But okay, that's that's what they did. And so now they everybody in the room has to react to that and and they go with the flow. And you know that part is going to be interesting, I think in in uh over there and their their facility for the next three weeks.
So look, there's no there's no other way around it. The Jazz need everything right now. They don't need a point guard, they don't need a center. They need good players. They need a lot of good players, because when you analyze the Jazz and juxtapose their current situation with the teams in pro basketball that are winning games right now, there's just a Grand Canyon gap when it comes to the talent on the floor. I don't know if you've
landed on best case scenario at five. If they stay at five, just curious as to what sort of if you want to throw names out there, going to throw names, but just what sort of player should Jazz fans hope they walk away from the draft with coming up in just a few weeks.
Yeah, they, as you say, since they need everything. So what it's really going to come down to at the end of the day is how they judge, how they evaluate, and what they think is most important in terms of your somebody's skill level, their talent, their acumen for the game, and who is the best player that brings the best chance to have some kind of impact with the group that you have. If you end up staying at five,
you're gonna have several options. You know, whether whether an Ace Bailey, like the six to eight kid, who's a long wing, you know, who's a mid range scorer. You know, erratic, long range shooter, but you have some athleticism and may
be able to play multiple positions in the NBA. Whether there's someone like that you want to add to your group, you think, if he's good enough and can be you know, a guy like that, like you know, he's not as long as but a Jade McDaniels type guy to get out on the floor and be a three and D
type player. If you want a pure shooter or score, whether you like the kid from Baylor, the Edgecombe kid, or you like the Johnson kid from Texas who's a little bit bigger, if you think you just need a pure sure or a score, you know, in that regard,
if you think that's what you're gonna need. I think there's a couple of intriguing players to me, uh that they that they could be looking at that I think, you know, could be helpful and what they're trying to get toward and build and and uh and ironically enough, they're both from uh Cooper Flags teammates from Duke UH. And I'm talking about the con Kinnipple kid, who's a playmaker who measured out at the combine shorter than people thought. He was six five so he's gonna play sixty six
in shoes. He's gonna be a guard, playmaker type guy, all around guy. Uh. And then the other kid I really like as as a prospect is his teammate is a young big kid malowak Uh the the the kid from Africa, who's who's who's measured seven to one uh in bare feet on the combine over nine foot wings, nine foot standing of reach.
Just real.
I think he's a raw talent, but I think in this league and the way the game is going, someone like him who can move his body the way he can and and can really can really disrupt the game defensively.
Uh is a kind of guy that that.
You could be looking at, you know, to make UH, to get a guy who is a unique type of player in his frame and in his his athleticism for his size. That's a ways away. And again, you're not gonna be winning next year. So do you want a guy like that who you value, who you think, uh, you know, can can can come up and and can improve the next several years and and uh and get
someone like that going. If you did that, then you got to figure out what you're gonna do with someone like a Walker Kessler, and if that's someone you move on from in a trade scenario or sign a trade something because because now again you're talking about what our path to winning, how long is that going to take? And what is the money you were going to be spending to get there. So those are all the moving parts that you're trying to juggle, you know, within the framework of the upcoming draft.
So when it comes to and I don't look, I'm not trying to make something out of nothing. I honestly don't know how the summer is going to play out. In the landscape of the NBA, you hear a lot of people pontificating on the possibility of real movement, real movement from players that could make a big difference. And most off seasons we see maybe one or two of those. I don't know how many we'll see, if we'll see
any at all. But one of the teams that people continuously bring up and they do have some decisions to make are the Boston Celtics. They a new ownership group who was just informed that just for the right to have the team, you have to pay five hundred million dollars in luxury tax punitive penalties because of the way that the CBA is set up now, Danny Austin will all spent time in Boston. Danny spent a long time in Boston. Austin comes to the Jazz straight from the
Boston Celtics. What sort of, if any at all, synergies would exist in that scenario that if Boston's open to do business and the Jazz wants to get involved here because of the familiarity, is that something Jazz fans can look at potentially as a positive?
Sure?
Yeah.
The issue with the Celtics is that the new ownership group came in, they knew what the books were like.
I mean, they didn't come in blind, So they knew they were going to be coming into a scenario where next year there's a potential if they kept the team the way it is currently constructed, that with salaries, taxes, penalties, second Apron repeater tax, all these levels of financial responsibility that you have toward your player salaries, they could be paying close to five hundred million dollars into that area.
But they but that ownership group was willing to do that when they took over because they had the prospect that all of our guys are in place. They're all signed, we know they can win. We are hopeful they can win again, and that's that's what we're in the business for. That takes a major hit, major when Jason Tatum goes down and now he's out for probably most of next year. Okay, how does that affect the rest of their team competitively? What does that do to their real chances of winning?
Because as a new ownership group, well, we might want to pay or willing to pay that kind of money in all those salaries and penalties, et cetera. If we really believe we have a legitimate chance to win. Okay, if we don't think we have a real chance to win, then why are we spending all that money? And so now the Jason Tatum injury comes into play, he's a major cog out of the lineup. You we're not gonna have him for most of next year, maybe all of
next year. You never know how he's gonna recover from that that injury. But say in a worst case scenario he doesn't come back, we're gonna be a good team still. But are we really a championship level team? And if we don't think we are, but we can be competitive, how much. Do we want to still get into that that money issue or do we just back off it and say, Okay, we gotta we gotta take our lumps.
We got a bad break.
Okay, maybe we have to retool and we have to do something else with the finances to to reel that back in somewhat. And so that may be something where other teams, the Jazz, for one, Phoenix another one. I
don't know other teams that have room. Brooklyn has a lot of room where the vultures might be circling the Boston Celtics and saying, hey, hey, we'll be willing to talk to you about you know, Jalen Brown, or we'll be willing to talk to you about Drew Holliday or you know, or whoever it is and that we think
can help us. And you know, and then of course the Celtics have to want to play ball and and have to you know, feel like, you know, these are going to be moves that makes sense business wise because of this bad break we got with the Tatum injury. And nobody is going to know that better than Austin h who is right on the front line with all
of that. So so the Jazz will have an inner track, not necessarily getting a deal done or something like that, but but at least information and knowledge wise about how those owners are thinking, how the the internal workings are going, what Brad Stevens is thinking. All these kinds of things that would play in to it, and of course the relationship between the two when you get down to you know, maybe discussing stuff that's real or that you may want
to be able to do. Because the other thing that can come into play that can be helpful and these kinds of discussions is the fact that, oh, you're out West and you're one of the worst teams, so you're not really going to affect us, the Boston Celtics if we do a deal with you, and and we're not gonna you're not in our division, right, You're not the Knicks, So we're trying to do business with you and and
and feed our nearest competitors, so to speak. So that also can play a factor in those kinds of discussions. So that kind of stuff can come up. That's what
we've talked about Spence all along. You know, with this losing and tanking and whatever, that part of that process involves, you know, being in the right place at the right time, when something happens to somebody else and another team all of a sudden has to pivot off something, and you're standing there, you know, with your hand up and going hey, hey, me over here, you know, you know, let's talk about something.
So the Jazz are in that kind of position, and only time will tell how those those kinds of things may come about.
Before I set you loose, do you anticipate?
So if we operate off the premise, and this is a dangerous assumption because nobody knows. But if Boston's open for business, if Giannis is okay with potentially looking to leave Milwaukee, if the Phoenix Suns have to move off of Durant, if all of this veteran star talent really
is available, do you think the Jazz get involved. You know, everyone is latched onto Austin's comments last week where you know, in a response to Sean's question about your personal theory or whatever when it comes to taking or manipulating minutes, and Austin said, you won't see that this year. And as we discussed last week, that's all find and good. You have a top eight protected pick that you have
to keep. You just do if that if they win thirty five games and Mark Tatum pulls the number nine envelope out and says Utah Jazz and they send a top ten pick to the team that I think is about to win the World championship, it is a massive failure. So it's all finding good to give lip service about Hey, great sound by a way to go.
They've got a hold lot of that pick.
And if they get involved with some sort of Jalen Brown whatever deal, I don't know that I see that making sense.
Yeah, well, well, you know, again, all those things are hypothetical. Spence, I would say, just on the surface when when fans are looking at just what could happen in the coming weeks and and and during the summertime. You know, Kevin Durant, you know, Phoenix has to do something with him, in my opinion, because that's just not working. You know, he's
got one year left. He's gonna want to go to somebody who can win win a but b uh, You'll offer him a possible contract extension, but he doesn't control that. Phoenix has to be able to man up and say, this is what we're going to do for the best interests of the Phoenix Suns and so whatever that ends up being, you know, that's Kevin Durant. That's your problem. Okay, janis a different deal. Janie has has several years left. Janice is the good guy. Yannis is the guy you
want in your organization. Janice has not said that he wants to be traded. He has not made any kind of demand, and that's not going to be his nature.
That's not his personality. What has come out and sometimes been misconstrued by the media is that Janice has made it known that he's willing to discuss with with the people who run the Milwaukee Bucks organization the idea of what makes sense to you as an organization, and how does that affect me as a player, And if we mutually agree that it's better for you to move on from me, because Dame Lillard is going to be out next year like Tatum, and he is going to be
getting paid over fifty million dollars to watch the games from the bench, and were really going to be a serious competitive team and if we're not, you know, I'm
the good soldier. I'll do whatever you guys want. But if it makes sense for you to move on from me and my big number and I'm still in my prime and you just have to recalibrate because again we got a bad break with the Damian Lillard injury, and so you want to move me, then I think that one would be more where Giannis would be, you know, saying behind closed doors, Hey, look, I'm willing to play ball, but don't don't send me somewhere where I can't win,
because you know, I, you know, I've been the good guy and you know I brought a championship here and a couple MVPs and you know, and I think the Milwaukee organization will say, you know, dude, we got you. We're going to get you to you know whatever, the Lakers, so we're going to get you to okay, see somehow or whatever it's going to be. But they that that
one would be a little bit different to me. I think Giannis would be able to dictate quietly and and and and good, good conscience, you know what he would
want to do in that regard. But that's a tough deal from Milwaukee too, because they got to figure out that's a financial thing, and that's that's a real thing that that you gotta be honest with yourself and that's a that's a tough deal to hope when you when you're in that position and you didn't count on it, and and here we are and we gotta we gotta figure this thing out, and you know, and but again Spence to the point earlier, that's why the Jazz put
themselves in the position of not being a good team of having all these draft picks, having all this freedom, if you will, to make and move and and and shuffle guys and whatnot. And they may be the guys who are waiting there on the sideline going yeah, yeah, we'll we're willing to talk to you.
Yeah, we got a bunch of you know, what do you like? You like? A, you like B, you like C? What do you like? You know? And and and have.
The opportunity to get into that kind of discussion and then and then you never know how things are gonna roll.
Yeah, the only time will tell. Should be a fascinating offseason. All right, my man, great to see you. We'll see you next week, right, Yes, you got it, thanks man. The Great Richard Smith