By Michael Pina, special to Salt City Hoops

After the Jazz season ends — by way of either a horrible collapse down the stretch or a merciless four-game postseason — Utah Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey will probably sit in his office and shift restlessly in a chair, much like guests on awkward dating game shows used to do in the late 1970s. Staring back at him will be about a dozen metaphorical closed doors; behind each, a different future.

One has a 32-year-old Al Jefferson starting at center, making nearly $20 million, another has a fully-formed Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter tandem giving opposing frontcourts nightmares (much like the Memphis Grizzlies do today). Behind another door sits a healthy, relaxed, confident, rich Paul Millsap making his first All-Star game appearance in 2014.

As Grantland.com’s Zach Lowe pointed out last week, the next three years for Utah can go in so many different directions that a dozen doors don’t nearly hold all the possible scenarios. Some are obviously better than others.

If Marvin Williams picks up his $7.5 million option next season — it’d be shocking if he turned it down — the Jazz will have $26.1 million in guaranteed salary on their books next season. Should they let Millsap and Jefferson go (unlikely), cap space will be more than plentiful.

For the purpose of letting Favors and Kantor develop and see the floor as much as possible next season, it’s probable that Millsap is the one Utah chooses to keep. He’s also due for a cheaper contract.

But instead of trying to weave our way through questions that Lowe already did a fantastic job of tackling, let’s turn our focus towards Utah’s greatest question mark, the point guard position. Here are five and a half helpful possibilities:

5. Pay Jose Calderon, Darren Collison, or Jarrett Jack much more money than they’re worth on a one-year deal.

The price tag on these players will probably be inflated, considering the lack of point guard talent in this summer’s open market. But if the Jazz can offer more money than just about anyone else (for one year) AND promise 82 games of starting point guard status, I’m sure at least one will be grateful enough to take the bait (most likely Collison), as opposed to playing elsewhere on a longer deal.

It’s a stop-gap situation, and would strictly be done to increase Utah’s probability of making the playoffs in 2014. After that the Jazz would likely find themselves back at square one.

4. Move Alec Burks and their own first round pick (or Golden State’s, to which the Jazz hold the rights) to a lottery team for the draft rights to Oklahoma State freshman point guard Marcus Smart.

Utah deals an inconsistent off-guard in the middle of his rookie deal—whose primary skill set overlaps Gordon Hayward’s—along with one of their two first round picks for the best point guard in the 2013 draft. Sounds simple enough. It’s why assets are so important.

3. Offer Jeff Teague a (near) max contract.

This option is fascinating, and comes with its fair share of risk. It would also primarily be done with the interest of forcing Atlanta to pay their point guard much more money than they’d like.

But in my opinion, Teague is the most intriguing restricted free agent point guard who wasn’t offered an extension earlier this season; a player who holds a slightly higher development curve than the other two options: Tyreke Evans and Brandon Jennings. (The group that was already locked up includes Ty Lawson, Stephen Curry, and Jrue Holiday.)

A max contract offer would be for four years at roughly $61 million, and it wouldn’t be wise for Utah to offer something so outlandish on the hunch that the Hawks would match. But if the Jazz made a relatively more reasonable four-year, $50 million offer, would Teague be theirs? Do they even want him?

2. Trade for Rajon Rondo

If Utah is serious about upgrading the point guard situation, this is the surest way to get it done. Unfortunately, a trade will likely force either Enes Kanter or Derrick Favors out of town. But to obtain value in this league you have to give something up, and in return they’d be receiving a perennial All-Star who’s probably headed to the Hall of Fame.

1. Do absolutely nothing, then offer Eric Bledsoe a max contract after next season.

This is the best-case scenario. Utah flounders in 2014 with no respectable production from the point guard position—boosting their status in the lottery—then take their rolled over cap space and throw as much as they can in Eric Bledsoe’s direction.

(This option is semi-related to number four, but instead of signing a quality player like Jack or Calderon, the Jazz would turn their focus on a lesser, much cheaper talent like Nate Robinson or Beno Udrih, still for only a one-year deal.)

Utah won’t be the only team interested in Bledsoe’s virtuous two-way potential, and there’s always the faint possibility that Los Angeles matches their offer. But no team would rival Utah’s ability to sell Bledsoe on their organizational youth and incredible upside. It’s a risk, but one that has enough potential to turn the Jazz into a versatile force to be reckoned with.

0. Chris Paul.

The only thing missing is the outlandish possibility that the Jazz make a run at Chris Paul. [Editor's note: Believe me, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I've heard it said by people "familiar with the thinking of the team." We'll see.]

The only way it happens:

• The Jazz make a strong run to end the season, make noise in the playoffs, and somehow transform themselves into an exciting team.
• The Clippers struggle down the stretch and flop (literally and figuratively) in the Playoffs.
• Donald Sterling pulls a Sterling and decides to low-ball Chris Paul.
• With five players under contract next season — and only seven if you include Marvin William’s player option and a team option on Kevin Murphy — the Jazz could have a dramatically different roster next season and a lot of money to spend this summer. If they let Chris Paul play GM and pick the guys he wants, maybe he decides to take the money and try his hand at team building.

Again, not likely, but a possibility. Who do you want playing the point for the Jazz next year?
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Michael Pina writes for ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. His work has also appeared at The Classical and ScoreBig.com. Follow him on Twitter @MichaelVPina. 

After a four-game road stretch that involved some of the most unlucky and frustrating collapses in recent memory, the Jazz finally picked up a win over the hapless Detroit Pistons. [Box Score]

Grantland’s Zach Lowe gives the Jazz his longform breakdown treatment and serves up some brilliant analysis and a few scathing reviews for the team he calls “the most interesting franchise in the league right now.”

Lowe addresses all the important issues surrounding this season for the Jazz: What happened before the trade deadline? What plans (if any) do the Jazz have for Jefferson and Millsap going forward? Should the Jazz continue to shoot for the Playoffs or slip into the lottery? Why do the Jazz play such terrible defense? Why are the minutes distributed with near-complete disregard for both the eye test and stats? Excellent stuff all the way around.

First, a little myth-busting about the conventional wisdom that the Jazz feel/felt forced to move Jefferson and/or Millsap before the deadline to avoid allowing them to walk “for nothing” in the offseason:

In other words, the Jazz aren’t going to cry if they lose Millsap or Jefferson for nothing in July. It’s an NBA cliché that losing an asset for nothing is bad, and that cliché is generally true; the Nuggets didn’t really want Nene, but they re-signed him anyway at a price they knew could move.

But a lot of GMs don’t view this as a universal rule, and it appears Utah is in this camp. Several front-office folks outside Utah framed the issue this way: Jefferson and Millsap are salary slots who also take a certain number of minutes. Letting one walk for “nothing” wouldn’t really net Utah nothing; rather, it would open up both salary and minutes Utah could fill with Favors and Kanter, and down the line with another signing — this summer or next. This line of reasoning holds special value for teams under the cap, because they can actually sign any players they can attract on the open market. Utah losing Millsap without replacement compensation is not the same as capped-out Chicago losing Omer Asik without replacement compensation.

And then the brutal assessment on coaching:

The team is probably already playing Jefferson too much, which brings us back to Corbin. Here’s a remarkable thing: Utah’s five most-used lineups this season have been outscored. Ditto for 17 of its 18 most commonly used three-man groups, and usually by margins much larger than Utah’s overall negative scoring margin.

Only two of the 80 teams that have qualified for the playoffs in the last five years have done so with their top five lineups being outscored: the 2008-09 Bulls, and … last year’s Jazz. This is very strong evidence that Corbin is basically just playing the wrong guys and wrong combinations in the wrong minutes distribution. His better defenders and all-around guys — Favors, Kanter, DeMarre Carroll, Gordon Hayward, et al. — deserve a larger chunk of the time going to Jefferson, Mo Williams (now back from injury), and others. Lineup data can be pretty noisy over short sample sizes, but the noise is getting really loud at this point. [emphasis mine]

The noise from critics is starting to reach the team. The Deseret News’ Jody Genessy elicited the wrath of an annoyed Corbin when asking questions:

With fire in his eyes and a feisty tone, the third-year Jazz coach shared a message about that before Monday’s tipoff. It’s one he’s been giving his team, which had lost four straight and seven of eight games before the schedule mercifully pitted the Jazz against the Detroit Pistons.

“I tell the guys, ‘You can listen to criticism, but most of the people that’s criticizing don’t have any idea of what you’re going through,’” Corbin said in his pregame media interview. “They probably haven’t never did anything at this level in their life. They can talk. Talk is cheap. We’ve got to go out and do what we’ve got to do.

For a change, the Jazz did that.

To be clear, I don’t think anything about Corbin’s comments is anything more than a team facing a tough test trying to stay together. I don’t think he deserves to get skewered for it, either. If that’s what the Jazz need to finally get motivated, then they should get speeches all the time. Corbin has always hated to answer questions. I think he just finally got sick of it and popped off a bit. His coaching strategy is very “work harder” and “get better,” very gut-based, so it frustrates him to give reasons for choices.

Regardless, it will be interesting to pay attention to how the team addresses the questions highlighted in the Grantland piece over the next few months.

By Matt Pacenza
special to Salt City Hoops

Most Jazz fans – if Twitter is an accurate measure – were disappointed that the team made no trades prior to the 2013 NBA trade deadline.

Fans itching for a trade weren’t so much hoping the team would acquire a jewel of a player – that seemed unlikely – but rather wanted to move Al Jefferson or Paul Millsap for any decent asset to free up minutes for the team’s talented young bigs, Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter.

The team’s current playing time allotment frustrates many of us. We believe that building the next great Jazz team requires that Favors play more than 22 minutes and Kanter more than 14, their current averages. We believe that the team is failing to do what other forward-thinking teams do: Give their stars of the future sufficient playing time to improve.

That’s the story we grumpy Jazz fans tell ourselves. But is it true? Are Favors and Kanter playing less than other promising young bigs have?

To answer the question, let’s examine centers and power forwards chosen in the top 5 picks in the 2004-2011 drafts, excluding the most recent draft, so each player has at least two seasons of data. Those are arbitrary cut-offs, but it leaves us with 17 modern NBA players to consider – a reasonable number.

How much did they play in their first few seasons? How well did they play? What other circumstances (such as the team’s record) help explain their playing time?

Let’s start out with the two young Jazzmen, focusing just for now on minutes and PER. Remember, PER is a widely-accepted statistical measure of a player’s contribution to the team, adjusted for per-minute production (but isn’t a reliable measure of defense). 15 is average; 20 is a near All-Star. Above 25 an All-NBA candidate.

The numbers tell the story all Jazz fans know well: Two young guys already performing above average are playing backup minutes. Perhaps most maddeningly, their minutes-played have barely budged even as their performance has improved.

The 17 players analyzed below break neatly into four categories: Studs, Duds, Incompletes and Comps. Let’s move through the first three categories quickly before turning to those bigs that compare well to Kanter and Favors.

THE STUDS

Not much point comparing these current All Stars to Favors and Kanter. Each was, nearly immediately, well above average. They deserved starter’s minutes immediately – or certainly by their second years – and got them.

THE DUDS

A trio of cautionary tales: the athletic shot-blocker who has struggled in every other facet of the game. The undersized center from a major college program. And the next Dirk, except he doesn’t shoot particularly well.

Again, not much point in comparing these to Kanter and Favors: These three were lucky to get the minutes they did, compared to the Jazzmen’ solid starts.

THE INCOMPLETES

Valanciunas is intriguing: In his first year in Toronto, after a year in Europe, he’s putting up some decent numbers, despite how raw he is.

What’s easy to forget about the oft-injured Oden is how excellent he was in his limited minutes. He will attempt a comeback next year. Given how well he played in the few games he did stay on the court, he will have plenty of teams vying to give him a shot.

THE COMPS

Eight players left. Time to add more data: How good were their teams? It’s one thing for a guaranteed lottery team to let their kids play, another for a borderline playoff team like the Jazz.

And now it gets illuminating. The guys we can actually compare to Kanter and Favors. Young bigs, picked high in the draft, who played pretty well right away.

Let’s state the obvious first: They all played a lot more than Kanter and Favors, with one exception: Thomas, who we will get to in a moment. This article’s premise is borne out: Promising young bigs – even those on decent teams – have tended to get starter’s minutes. Every single one of these players, except Thomas and the two Jazzmen, were playing 30 minutes by their second year.

But were they on teams that had nothing to lose? Four clearly were: Thompson, Cousins, Bogut and Okafor. All remained firmly in the lottery during their first years, except for the Bucks during Bogut’s rookie year.

The Bucks made those playoffs as an 8 seed, like the Jazz last year. That Bucks team had some decent players – most notably Michael Redd – but their other bigs weren’t clearly better than Bogut, even as a rookie. Jamaal Magloire played a few more minutes than Bogut, but his PER was only 11, so the former Ute was likely a better choice. The team’s third and fourth bigs, Joe Smith and Dan Gadzuric, actually had PERs of 17 and 16, but had largely undistinguished careers.

The next good comp is Al Horford, who as a rookie joined a talented and young Hawks team led by Joe Johnson, Josh Smith and Mike Bibby that soon become a fixture in the Eastern Conference playoffs. However, the team’s talent was on the wings: Horford immediately was the most productive big behind Smith, easily beating out Zaza Pachulia, Salim Stoudemire and the afore-mentioned Sheldon Williams for minutes.

And finally we get to Tyrus Thomas, who at a glance is the closest single comp to Kanter and Favors: a promising high lottery pick who put up decent numbers but played limited minutes for competing teams. His rookie year, the Bulls won 49 games and Thomas was the first big off the bench, behind starters Ben Wallace and PJ Brown, who were aging but remained solid defensive players.

The next year Brown left, but Thomas continued to play limited minutes behind not just Wallace, but newly-acquired Drew Gooden and Joe Smith (him again!). The team struggled, though, winning just 32 games.

His third year, Thomas started much of the season and his minutes jumped up to 28 a game. Wallace had left, but Gooden and Brad Miller played similar minutes, as the Bulls won 41 games the Eastern Conference’s 8 seed.

So why did Thomas struggle to get minutes his first couple years? Perhaps a better question is: Why did the Bulls continue to trade for and sign veteran bigs like Gooden, Smith and Miller when they had Thomas and his reasonable productivity on hand?

His player capsule in my “Pro Basketball Prospectus 2009-10” begins with the following description: “At times, Tyrus Thomas looks like one of the best young players in the NBA. Other times, too many of them, he looks wildly undisciplined.”

Neither Kanter nor especially Favors are “wildly undisciplined,” although both still make mistakes. Both commit fouls and turn the ball over at above-average rates, but not so much so that they demand a benching.

On one hand, this study can be interpreted to reinforce Jazz fans’ frustrations: Our talented young bigs are playing much less than virtually any other similar player in recent years. It is very unusual that Enes Kanter in his sophomore season plays just 14 minutes and Derrick Favors in his third just 22.

However, on the other, no team with two young promising lottery picks has ever been quite in this situation: Not just a borderline playoff team, but with players as productive and young as Jefferson and Millsap blocking their paths. It’s fair, as many of us do, to blame the Jazz front office for not freeing up those minutes. But the situation they face has been downright unprecedented.

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Follow Matt on Twitter: @mattpacenza