Roster Remake Nears Completion as Jazz Add Shooting, Creation

The Jazz had already moved into contention with the Conley trade. Bogdanovic gives them another scorer, creator. (via Pacers.com)

With Utah trailing by double digits in a December game against Indiana, then-Jazz point guard Ricky Rubio slid behind the Pacer defense and stealthily made his way into the left corner. He waited for the ball to whir around the perimeter where it found him open for a three. The shot glanced off the rim and the Pacers were off in transition.

As the Pacers brought the ball down, forward Bojan Bogdanovic slid behind the Jazz defense and tiptoed into the left corner. His Pacer teammates noticed and zipped the ball to him for an open three. Bottom of the net. The Pacers lead ballooned to 13, and they’d ultimately deal Utah an embarassing and historic 39-point home defeat.

It was a perfect 10 seconds to encapsulate the make-or-miss nature of the NBA, and it demonstrate an immutable fact about the Jazz that would surface over and over again. In a league where a few makes or misses decide games, playoff series and championships, they were light on shooters. They’d be reminded again throughout the course of the season, culminating in first-round loss to the Rockets in which they shot just 24% on wide open threes in the series. The team flat out needed shot-makers.

Not anymore.

Utah’s roster remake is nearly complete, the obvious goal of which was to increase the offensive dynamism that last year’s lovable Jazz team lacked. Mike Conley and Bogdanovic are more than just shooters — they are both capable creators, near All-Stars, and capable of leading playoff teams. The Jazz can now put a lineup of four capable shooters, passers and creators around their elite finishing big man, Rudy Gobert.

Adding Conley alone was enough to move the Jazz from the sub-elite class to being real contenders. As Clark Schmutz has written, he is a fantastic complement to Utah’s other primary creator, Donovan Mitchell, and he brings an upgrade to the offense without really sacrificing much of Utah’s stoutness on the other end.

Utah had a number of paths they could have taken after acquiring Conley: keep Derrick Favors, whose contract was non-guaranteed; clear Favors and use the resulting flexibility to chase a difference-maker like Bogdanovic; or find a lesser stretch four at a lower price point and reserve a little bit of leftover cash to add some depth. The luxury of the Conley acquisition is that the Jazz could have taken any of those paths and likely still been in a position to compete for primacy in the suddenly wide-open Western Conference.

The Jazz were wary about losing everything that Favors contributed, and so completing the one-two punch of finding both an upgrade at the stretch four position AND a solid rotational center was an important prerequisite to moving on from the longest-tenured Jazz man.  That was especially true if their search landed them a power forward who fit the stretch four construct better but was a downgrade from Favors in macro terms — Bobby Portis and Thad Young types. Tobias Harris was on their radar, but they knew that his asking price would require some cap gymnastics that would cost them one or maybe both of Joe Ingles and Dante Exum, and they were unwilling to move those players for anything less than a true star¹.

That made the list rather short. They flirted with Nikola Mirotic before he decided to return to Spain, but even he would have been a noticeable step down from Favors in some key areas. Bogdanovic was on their list all along, and a player they really like, but nobody was sure what his price range would be, coming off a season where he averaged 18 points per game and led Indiana to the playoffs even after star guard Victor Oladipo got hurt. Once Utah sensed that Bogdanovic could potentially be lured away from the Pacers at roughly the Favors price point², they went all in, even going so far as to cancel planned meeting with other free agents.

As a pure 4, Mirotic might have technically fit the roster better, but Bogdanovic is a far better player overall. Mirotic’s gravity is real, but his defense ranges from “vaguely playable” on his best days to terrible on the worst. He got played out of the starting lineup in the playoffs, and he’s nowhere near the creator that Bogdanovic is.

“Bogey” is more than just a pure shooter. He ranked in the 86th percentile for efficiency on plays he finished out of the pick-and-roll, and as Ben Dowsett aptly explored, he has even diversified his scoring repertoire by taking smaller guys to the blocks with success. Sure, he’s more of a combo forward than Mirotic, but he is a far more dynamic offensive player, and he provides a solid effort on defense. 

The Ed Davis score at the $4.7 million “Room” exception was a shrewd get, and helps lessen the sting of Favors’ departure. The UNC product is a rotation-quailty big man who has started off and on during his nine-year career. He won’t be quite the same scoring punch that Favors was when Gobert sat, but he will allow Utah to avoid much drop-off on the defensive end, and he has flypaper hands that make him an elite rebounder. 

We all remember back to the days when Utah wasn’t considered a real destination for valuable NBA free agents — but enough about last week.

In all seriousness, landing Bogdanovic and Davis at this price points is a pretty good signal that the narrative is changing where Utah is concerned. It’s likely that Indiana offered Bogey slightly more than the $73 million he scored on the Jazz deal, but obviously the Pacers don’t have a roster to contend immediately. Landing Davis on a two-year, $10 million deal — at a point in time when most of the league still had larger exception money available — was similarly impressive. 

By himself, Bogey might already represent the best free agent acquisition Utah has ever made. The 2004 offseason turned out to be a big one after Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur grew into All-Stars, but the former was coming off a season as Cleveland’s third or fourth best player, and the latter was a low-minute reserve for the champion Pistons. Joe Johnson was a higher-profile acquisition back in 2016, but he was clearly on the downhill part of his career, and had just come off a season averaging 13. 

To this writer’s knowledge, the Jazz have never landed a free agent coming off an 18-ppg season, and from February on, Bogey actually dropped 21 a night as he took a bigger role to fill Oladipo’s absense. He is an impact basketball player, arguably in the same tier as Harris — and he cost Utah barely over half of Tobias’ salary.

Utah still had needs to fill. Unless they plan on using Bogdanovic as a full-time four, they could use some depth there, and they’ll scour the league to see if veterans are interested in supplementing the Jazz’s new look look at the league minimum. But already, they’ve put themselves in the conversation as a real contender. Houston, Portland and Denver undoubtedly still believe in themselves as contenders, and the L.A. teams are still fighting for their chance to sign Kawhi Leonard. But Utah is right there with any of those teams.

As the Jazz were sniffing around for ways to add a scoring punch at last February’s trade deadline, ESPN’s Zach Lowe posited that the then-current construction of the Jazz could be a scary team “if Jae Crowder were like 10% better.” In Bogdanovic, they got a player who averaged 50% more points last season, shot nearly 10 percentage points better from 3-point land, and took and made more free throws. Crowder and Bogdanovic are one year apart in age. They got the 10% better version of Crowder and then some — and they got Conley at point. If those starters-plus-Crowder units were elite even with a couple of shaky shooters, imagine what those same quintets can do now that Bogey and Conley are involved.

The optimism is well-deserved: Utah has joined the contender class.

Odds and ends

Fare thee well. Conley, Bogdanovic and Davis will replace Rubio, Crowder and Favors in their respective roles, but that means three lovable (if flawed) player are moving on.

All three deserve nothing but appreciation from Jazz fans. That’s especially true of Favors, who had been with the Jazz for parts of nine seasons. He was the last link to era of Jazz players that included Andrei Kirilenko, Paul Millsap and others, and he’s already a top-10 franchise contributor in many statistical categories. He was likely Utah’s third best (or at least most consistent) contributor last season, and he saved Utah’s behind on a number of nights when Gobert was ailing, struggling, or punching cups off of scorers tables. He is synonymous with the Jazz brand at this point, and he will be missed.

Rubio and Crowder leave after much shorter stays in Utah, but both contributed to the culture and spirit of the Jazz over the last two years as the club stayed relevant even through a mini-retool. Rubio in particular was an important mentor to Mitchell in his first two season, and his offensive growth helped the Jazz to consecutive top-5 finishes in the West.

When these three make their return to Utah, Jazz fans should be boisterous in showing their support and appreciation. Jazz guys, all of them.

Fare thee well, part two. The Conley trade, as discussed back then, will also cost the Jazz Kyle Korver and Grayson Allen. Memphis will still have until the weekend to decide if they want to guarantee Korver’s salary and keep him, of pay $3.44 million to cut him loose. If they do waive him, Utah will be prohibited from reacquiring him for one year. If they were to trade him again and then THAT team let him go, then in theory, Utah could offer him a veteran minimum contract³.

Neto roster shuffle. As the Jazz prepared to orchestrate their moves, they also announced that they were releasing Raul Neto.

But here’s the thing, and this runs counter to the way that decision was reported: they actually didn’t have to. I’ve double-checked and triple-checked the math and even hear some reliable chatter that Utah could have completed the Conley and Bogey acquisitions without clearing that $2.15M.

So why did they do it? This might just be about roster prioritization. Utah has three guys already who can play some point guard, and Ingles and Bogdanovic can also both facilitate the offense for stretches. When you’re in contention mode, how you spend every dollar and roster spot matters. Utah might have just decided that having a fourth point guard at that price point was a luxury, or they might have plans to use that roster spot in a slightly different way. 

Another possibility: they could use the tiny bit of cap space that move opens up to sign a couple of Royce O’Neale-style deals, and then even re-sign Neto to the minimum at that point⁴. Let me explain:

True minimum contracts are limited to two seasons, which means the player will hit free agency before a team has full rights to re-sign the player. When you sign a player using cap space, or a piece of certain exceptions, you can get around that 2-season rule. That’s what the Jazz did when they signed O’Neale to a team-friendly 3-year pact. As a result, when he hits free agency next July, Utah will be able to pay him any amount up to the max salary, and they’ll be able to generate matching rights as well.

What the Jazz have to work with after releasing Neto, if they order the Davis signing last.

Waiving Neto technically gives the Jazz about $1.5M in cap room⁵. That’s basically minimum-salary money, but it gives them the opportunity to sign a player or two to longer deals by ordering transactions. They could sign a rookie or 1-year vet to a deal that starts at minimum salary but runs three seasons. That would clear away one empty roster charge, and they’d have enough to repeat the operation with another rookie minimum. THEN they’d complete the Ed Davis signing and sign other minimum contract veterans including — if they wanted him — Neto.

It might sound like a lot of work for some minimum salary dudes, but if the Jazz believe that operating this way gives them two bites at the apple in terms of finding the next O’Neale type contributor, why not go for it?

(There’s also a possibility that Utah went back to Bogdanovic and pitched a flat/descending contract structure. That would also explain the need to cut Neto, but I haven’t heard that that’s the case.)

TPEs? Another question I get is whether the Jazz can use the remaining traded player exception from the Alec Burks trade, or generate another one by moving Favors. The answer is no — sort of.

The problem with using the Burks TPE is that the Jazz can’t really take much salary back and still have the room to complete their Conley and Bogey deals. You don’t need a TPE to acquire a player on a minimum contract, so the TPE is only valuable if a team wants to get rid of a player making more than the minimum but less than the $1.5M amount mentioned above (plus $100K, so actually $1.6M). Any more than that, and Utah doesn’t have room for their other deals.

There is exactly one tradable player in the NBA on that kind of salary: promising Knick Mitchell Robinson. There are a dozen or so players⁶ who make the minimum salary but on longer than 2-year deals, so the TPE would allow Utah to take them back when they otherwise couldn’t. But Utah would have to be interested in someone from that list AND his current team would have to be willing to give him away.

That’s why it’s far more likely that the last bit of cap space gets used as described above, for one or two O’Neale-style signings.

Technically the Favors trade to New Orleans will create a $17.65M TPE, but Utah will have to immediately renounce it in order to finish their other offseason deals.

Depth. Another positive note for Utah’s depth came with Tony Jones’ revelation that Exum is on track to start the season healthy.

Utah’s three second-round picks will also get a chance during Summer League and again in fall camp to make their case for roster spots and/or minutes. So far, one game in, Jarrell Brantley looks like the most likely to force his way onto the roster. But it’s early.