The Cost of Utah’s Lotto Slide and the Value of 10 (plus the Big Picture)

The Jazz are one of just four teams to never move up on lottery day. (Dan Clayton)

Here’s a fun fact: only three teams that have been in the NBA for the entirety of the lottery era have never improved their anticipated draft position on lottery day: the Denver Nuggets, the Dallas Mavericks and the Utah Jazz. Miami, who debuted just a few years after the lottery was introduced, has also never moved up.

The other 26 teams all have. Philadelphia and the LA Clippers have each moved up 7 times. Charlotte has moved up just five times, but by 27 total spots. Brooklyn did move from #6 to #3 once with a pick it owed the Jazz; that’s the closest Utah has ever come to experience lottery luck. Their own pick has never moved up.

That streak of lottery-day disappointment continued on Sunday, when the ping pong balls pushed them back from #8 to #10. Two teams with worse lottery odds jumped over them and into the top four.

A quarter century worth of draft trade history might hint at what the drop really cost the Jazz in terms of asset value. I looked at every pick trade (draft-adjacent, since pick value is different in February and draft order is unknown at that point) since 2000 where a team moved up by a couple of spots in the late lottery. The sample size wasn’t huge, but here’s what it taught us about the value difference between picks in that range:

• Portland moved up two spots to #11 in 2008 by including a rotation player (Jarrett Jack) for non-productive matching salary.
• Houston moved up two spots to #12 in 2014 by including a rotation player (Sam Dalembert) and a 2nd and taking back non-productive matching salary.
• Orlando moved up two spots to #10 in in 2014 by erasing a previous debt for a lotto-protected 1st and adding a 2nd.
• OKC moved up two spots to #10 last year by absorbing Davis Bertans’ salary for Dallas. The $22 million remaining guaranteed salary generally could be dumped for around a first.
• LAC moved up ONE spot to #11 in 2018 for two 2nds, so we could extrapolate that to say a 2-pick difference would be worth 4 seconds.
• That’s consistent with last year’s Wizards, who moved up ONE spot for two 2nds. (It was rolled into the Beal deal, but this part of the trade was effectively #8 and two seconds for #7.)

So using those six trades as a gauge, it seems like Utah’s bad fortune on Sunday effectively cost them the equivalent of four seconds, or a bad first, or a Jack/Dalembert-level role player. Not hugely harmful, but not what the asset-accumulating Jazz were probably hoping for after a 5-25 close to their season that was primarily intended to improve their odds at a good pick.

C’est la vie. Or at least c’est la lottery luck.

What #10 is worth specifically

Speaking of draft trade history, let’s see what the absolute value of picks around the Jazz’s post-lottery spot looks like. Each draft has its own perceived talent drop-offs, so this isn’t exact — which is why for this exercise we’ll look at the past 25 years’ worth of draft-adjacent trades for picks in the 8-12 range.

All draft-adjacent trades since 2000 involving picks 8-12 (click to enlarge)

With a few exceptions, teams who have decided to sell a pick around Utah’s spot have come away with a starter-caliber player (but generally not a star) or a couple of picks.

• Twelve of the 19 trades above were move-up trades where the receiving team moved up between one and 10 draft spots.
  • We already broke down the smaller moves up above: usually a non-lottery first or multiple seconds (or a role player).
  • The bigger climbs almost always involved another guaranteed first, either in the same draft or later.
• Five of the remaining trades involved a team swapping a pick in that range for a starter-level player: Shane Battier, Josh Richardson, Jonas Valanciunas, Serge Ibaka or 1-time All-Star Jeff Teague.
• The last two were trades for future draft interests. The Clippers bought in AND got rookie Corey Maggette for a single future 1st because they were willing to absorb salary. The Knicks got three picks for #11 (Ousmane Dieng), and two of those still have a chance to turn into pretty decent picks. (Washington’s pick protections relax to top 8, Detroit’s to top 9.)

The Orlando-Philly swap from 2014 that we already discussed above actually provides an interesting framework for Utah to consider if there are multiple players still available at 10 they believe in. Philadelphia moved back two spots in exchange for a previously owed first-round pick debt to be erased (plus an extra 2nd). That’s kind of an interesting precedent because the Sixers’ pre-trade draft spot was precisely #10 that year, and because the team picking two spots after the Jazz this year is OKC, which currently owns a protected 2025/26 Jazz 1st.

If OKC likes someone enough to want to secure them at #10, that could be a fair construct, either as part of a bigger trade (could OKC really take interest in John Collins?) or just a straight 12-for-10 swap where Utah gets to stop worrying if that OKC debt will cost them the right to swap with Minnesota/Cleveland in 2026.

Moving up?

Over the same span of time, there have been 21 trades involving a top-7 pick, in case we want to suss out what the Jazz might be looking at cost-wise to move up.

Draft-adjacent pick trades involving picks 1-7, since 2000. (Click to enlarge)

• Once again, a lot of these (10) were move-up trades, although almost all were small jumps. The biggest jumps inside the top 7 were 13-to-7 and 6-to-3. Both of those required TWO extra firsts, including when Utah leapt up to grab Deron Williams.
• Three more were tecnically also move-up deals, but the real headlining piece wasn’t the later pick, but rather a star-level player: Antonio McDyess (who had been All-NBA and a 1-time All-Star) and late firsts, Jimmy Butler (a 3-time All-Star at that point and coming off his first All-NBA) and a mid 1st, and Shareef Abdur-Rahim (technically not an All-Star until the following season, but a career 21-ppg scorer) and #27. Charlotte traded 19 and two rotational players for 7; I’m calling that a player trade more than a move-up trade.
• Some other star/starter trades that netted a team a high pick: Elton Brand, Ray Allen, Jrue Holiday, and reigning 6MOY Antawn Jamison all brought back a pick in the top 6.
• Minnesota ’09 and Portland ’06 got into the top 7 by trading just starters or key reserves, but they also took back non-productive salary in the process.
• Every time I revisit this exercise, I’m surprised anew that Chicago got #7 (Luol Deng) just by sacrificing a future non-lottery first and cash. That’s an outlier.

Buying in after 12?

We won’t dive headlong into the other 95 draft-adjacent trades since 2000 that involved a first-rounder from 13 to 30.

But I was curious to see what 29 plus 32 might yield since Utah owns those picks. There were no trades with that exact combination, but there were some that were close. Portland used 27 + 35 to get to 22. Washington used 30 + 35 to get to 23. The Knicks used 27 + 38 to get to 23. New Jersey used 27 + 31 to get to 24. Portland used 27 + 33 to get to 25. You get the picture.

Failure or bad luck?

Unsurprisingly, the response by some Jazz fans to the team’s lottery slide was to issue indictments of the Jazz’s middle-of-the-road strategy to the past season. They didn’t commit hard to maximizing draft odds until too late, the thinking goes, and therefore they must now lie in the bed they made.

This of course ignores the reality of how this particular lottery played out. Atlanta, who was even less committed to lotto odds (finishing five games ahead of the Jazz) was the headline of the night with its 9-spot jump. Brooklyn also finished ahead of the Jazz, and that pick — which will be made by Houston — will be third. Detroit, who was so determined to lose that the Pistons set a league record with 28 straight defeats, got bumped four spots back. This is a random process by definition, and more so with the new odds.

In other words, getting angry at the (perceived) strategy because of how the ping pong balls fell is a little unfair. If you were already angry because the Jazz’s pre-lottery position was 8th instead of 4th or whatever, then that’s at least a more intellectually honest criticism… to which I’d respond that the Jazz were never going to be that bad. Their coach is too damn good and they stumbled into an All-Star in year one of a rebuild, which are awesome problems to have. All of these tanking teams are hoping one of these picks will someday yield a Lauri Markkanen.

But to the larger criticism, the Jazz are far from directionless. They gave their existing players a half season to show if they could start the climb because that’s what guys like Markkanen were asking for, and because that’s a way to see what you have. They probably would have kept after it, too, except that the Jazz’s advanced markers (like net rating) told the brass that they weren’t quite as good as their record in early February suggested.

Also, there are some things that are worth at least as much as the difference between the 8th best draft odds and the 6th best draft odds, like half a season of meaningful basketball to develop and assess players. Collin Sexton’s value is higher today than it was in October because he was helping the Jazz in games that mattered. Simone Fontecchio certainly wasn’t drawing offers of two GOOD second-round assets (this year’s #32 and recent #36 pick Gabriele Procida) before the season, but his growth in real basketball contexts helped his value and got the Jazz extra shots at talent. Being competitive for half a season helped Will Hardy’s credibility, and allowed Utah to test some configurations that matter to team-building. You can’t tell me Detroit or San Antonio or Washington got the same value out of their respective 82-game seasons.

In a vacuum, of course you’d rather be in a better position heading into (and coming out of) lottery day. But in real life, it’s just not a choice you make in a vacuum. The stuff the Jazz would have had to engineer in order to go in with Detroit’s lotto odds or Charlotte’s lotto odds or Toronto’s lotto odds — all of whom will pick outside the top 4, by the way! — would have cost them something, too.

Maybe you disagree with how the front office weighed those costs and benefits. That’s fine, understandable even! But if you actually think they just forgot to weigh them at all, or that they had no strategy for how they wanted to use this season to advance the program, that’s simply dead wrong. The Jazz made choices in October, knowing full well that they’d reanalyze those choices at various points throughout the season.

Don’t discard the possibility that they might do the same next year. Especially if they make a significant addition or two, don’t be surprised if the front office once again gives the players a chance to show whether they’re ready to start the ascent. As articulated here, there is some value to be garnered by doing that, even if they pull the plug later in the year as they’ve appared to do the past two seasons.

Whatever happens next, the Jazz have a lot to work with: a literal All-Star, $40 million in cap room, a promising young coach, four players still in the front half of their rookie contracts, three useful veterans with tradable 8-figure contracts (two of whom are under 27), and between 12 and 15 first-round picks in the next seven drafts.

Their asset stack would look slightly better if one of those things was a #8 pick instead of a #10 pick, but in the scheme of things, the Jazz still have a lot of ways to try to get better.