Interesting Decisions Remain As Jazz Look to Finalize Roster

Fan favorite Jarrell Brantley, #5, is one of a few Utah players whose Jazz future is still up in the air. (Melissa Majchrzak via utahjazz.com)

The really interesting and crucial part of the Utah Jazz’s offseason was over in a matter of days. After a new deal with their All-Star, two veteran free agent signings, and a depth trade, the Jazz’s rotation is basically set now. Mike Conley, Rudy Gay, Hassan Whiteside and Eric Paschall all addressed the media on Monday, a pretty good sign that the bulk of GM Justin Zanik’s summer work has been complete.

But that doesn’t mean the Jazz are fully done constructing their 2021-22 team. There are still some interesting machinations in play at the back of the roster.

Most who cover the club are figuring that Gay and Whiteside will fill open rotation spots left by Georges Niang and Derrick Favors, respectively, and Paschall, Udoka Azubuike and Elijah Hughes are also on guaranteed contracts. That’s 12 roster spots accounted for.

Past that, there’s actually some intrigue with how contracts and opportunities can play out. Let’s take a look at the negotiations and cap rules around those last few roster spots and deduce how Utah might complete its squad.

Miye Oni: non-guaranteed

Let’s list Oni here to satisfy my completism, but the reality is he’s pretty safe despite a fully non-guaranteed minimum salary. Technically 1/177 of Oni’s $1.78 million salary will guarantee each day beginning on the first day of the NBA’s regular season, until January 10 when the balance becomes locked in¹. But Oni’s coming off a year as the Jazz’s 10th man, a role in which he mostly had a positive impact when called upon. He filled open roles any time a guard or wing had to miss time, and when he did, the impact was generally positive. The team was +8.8 in his 519 regular season minutes.

That figure slipped quite a bit in the playoffs, but that was hardly Oni’s fault. The Jazz completely lost their identity for a few games there, debilitated on both ends by key injuries and whatever chemistry juju was making them look like a bunch of grumpy dudes in huddles. The young Yale product was hardly a central figure in that existential collapse. Oni did wind up chasing from behind after screens when he was asked to guard the Clippers’ stars, but literally every on-ball defender could say the same in that series. They just weren’t themselves, so avoid the temptation to zero in on those 3-4 games as a final verdict on any Jazz player.

Overall, he is someone they’ll still trust because of his gritty defense, and he has enough of an outside shot that there’s really no sacrifice on efficiency on the few possessions he uses as a pressure release valve. With Oni and Paschall potentially on the fringes of the rotation, the Jazz will have 11 players they can call upon who have played real NBA minutes before. That’s not insignificant. Last year, they went into the season with nine. The Clippers had as many as 12, depending on who was healthy, which is part of how they were able to experiment with different combinations against both the Mavs and Jazz in the playoffs. So bottom line: Oni’s roster spot is probably pretty safe.

Jared Butler: unsigned

This is where it gets more interesting. Second-round pick Jared Butler remains unsigned, and that has led to some speculation about what his agent — remember Mark Bartelstein, who engineered Gordon Hayward’s exit to Boston? — might be trying to accomplish here.

Teams don’t get specific exceptions to sign second-rounders like they do with first-rounders. Because the Jazz are into the luxury tax and gave every penny of the taxpayer midlevel exception to Gay, their only avenue to sign Butler is with a minimum exception. The reason that makes this tricky is not because of the salary — most second-round picks ultimately sign for a number right around that rookie minimum anyway. The sticking point is years. Players signed with the minimum exception can only sign a 1- or 2-year deal.

Often, teams will reserve a tiny bit of their MLE or cap space so that they can give second-round or undrafted rookie a contract that runs longer than two years, usually with some partial guarantees and/or team options negotiated into the deal. That’s how the Jazz originally signed Oni (cap space) and how the Warriors signed Paschall (MLE), which is why both are still under contract heading into their respective third seasons. The advantage to doing it that way is that a team has matching rights all the way up to the player’s maximum salary after that third season.

Players signed around Butler’s No. 40 draft position almost all got that kind of contract: #36 Miles McBride, #37 JT Thor and #42 Isaiah Livers all got at least 3-year deals with cap space or a piece of the MLE. (The outlier is Nemias Quetas, #39, who signed a 2-way contract with Sacramento.)

The Jazz won’t have that option with Butler. They can still match contract offers after one or two seasons, but the amount they can match is limited since they wouldn’t have full “Bird rights” at that point. Bartelstein knows that, and some are intimating that he may be trying to hold firm on a 1-year deal, which would alter Utah’s ability to keep Butler long-term.

• If Butler were a restricted free agent after one season, the most another team could offer him as a starting salary would be a dollar figure equal to the nontaxpayer MLE. But if the Jazz are deep into the tax again next year, they wouldn’t be able to match an offer starting in the MLE range.
• If Butler goes to restricted free agency after two, the offering team is still limited to the MLE as a starting salary, but the Jazz would have his “Early Bird” rights after two years, which would enable them to match an MLE offer.

So the Jazz would obviously far prefer a 2-year deal as it gives them more control over Butler’s future if he pops.

(Note: In either case, a team with cap space could also backload the offer with bigger raises than on a standard MLE contract, but that wouldn’t affect Utah’s ability to match. A full explanation of the contract structure is here if you’re bored, but what you really need to know about Butler’s situation is in the bullets above.)

Some have worried that Bartelstein might be using the threat of a 1-year deal to scare Utah into making some kind of concessions.  But there’s really not much more that Utah can concede on a 2-year minimum contract; they can’t offer a single dollar more or a single dollar less than $925,257 in year one and $1,563,518 in year two. The only thing left to negotiate is the amount of the salary guarantee, and my guess is the Jazz are already willing to guarantee Butler’s $2.8 million over two years.

If it’s not about squeezing more money out of the Jazz (it can’t be), Bartelstein could just want a 1-year deal so he can accelerate Butler’s path to real money. But he doesn’t have a lot of real leverage. The Jazz are the only NBA team that can sign Butler. His one option is to take Butler to an overseas league for a year to show the Jazz he’s not bluffing. But then next summer they’d be right back to this same detente — the Jazz would still have his exclusive NBA signing rights, and Butler would just be a year delayed in getting to a big payday.

And let’s not forget that Butler was a 40th pick. Teams said, “We prefer somebody else” 39 straight times before the Jazz took him. That has to affect the calculus on the likelihood of him getting away in the 1-year scenario, right? Would he even play enough in the next 11 months to convince one of the teams that passed on him to come spend their MLE (or an equivalent amount of cap space) on a big offer sheet the Jazz couldn’t match? Maybe. If he plays that much and that convincingly in year one, it probably means the Jazz found something pretty special.

The Jazz would still be better off to avoid that scenario at all, which is why the most likely scenario is that the sides eventually come together on the most straightforward compromise: the Jazz get the second year, but agree to guarantee 100% of it. That’s most likely where this ends up, even if the ballet is someone inevitable. There’s a reason why eight of the 15 players selected in the first half of the second round remain unsigned as of this writing: it’s the agent’s job to negotiate, and there’s way more up for negotiation on a second-rounder’s contract than on the rigid, scaled contract structure for first-round picks.

Expect the Jazz to eventually sign Butler for two years and $2.8M, fully guaranteed. And then have the ability to match offers via Early Bird rights in the summer of 2023.

If it plays out that way, and if the Jazz keep Oni, that’s 14 roster spots accounted for. They have the option to fill a 15th. Which takes us to Jarrell Brantley.

Brantley: fish or cut bait

Here’s a situation that shows us another way restricted free agency can play out.

In order to preserve matching rights on Brantley, the Jazz had to submit a “qualifying offer” (QO), which in his case was a one-year contract offer with around $84K (the salary for a two-way player) guaranteed. Utah did so, and that meant any other team wishing to sign the developing forward would have to consider Utah’s power to match.

But then Brantley changed the game by signing that QO. He is now under contract for $1.67 million with the Jazz, although only that $84K is guaranteed. Essentially he’s forcing the Jazz to make a decision on him by the end of training camp: keep me or cut me, but if I go, I take a nice $84,414 parting gift with me as I look for my next pro hoops gig.

It’s actually smart by Brantley. The market for a 25-year-old with 238 career NBA minutes probably isn’t bustling anyway, so by forcing the Jazz to pay him or move on, he’s removing one obstacle that might be keeping teams from engaging with him on a minimum contract, a new 2-way deal, or even an opportunity in other leagues.

Now the ball is in Utah’s court: do they want to fill that 15th roster spot? And if so, is Brantley the right guy?

Assuming everything else plays out the way we’ve described so far, the decision to keep Brantley alone would cost the Jazz an incremental $7.1M in salary and luxury taxes. That’s a lot of money to pay for someone unless there’s a real role available, and I’m not sure there is for Brantley. He’s behind all of Gay, Paschall, Bojan Bogdanovic, Royce O’Neale and to a degree Joe Ingles (who’s 6’8″ but plays more like a guard) in the forward rotation.

That’s why I think the most likely scenario is that Brantley and the Jazz part company sometime this fall, but in the meantime he’ll still have opportunities to keep fighting his way up the depth chart. His whole job right now is to hustle his way past at least one of the 14 men in front of him and make this a tough decision for the Jazz. If he doesn’t, the SLC Stars still have his G League rights, or he can go look for a better situation elsewhere, this time without the threat of the Jazz matching to deter interested teams.

Trent Forrest still unsettled

The Jazz also have a QO out to Forrest, who claimed rotation minutes when a slew of guard injuries hit Utah in the spring. In Forrest’s case, the QO is for another 2-way contract.

He can do what Brantley did and just sign that deal, but he may be hoping that his strong Summer League showing could open the doors for a standard NBA deal, whether from the Jazz or somebody else.

The Jazz can offer him a standard NBA contract or match any other team that signs him to one, but again, the cost might be prohibitive. Signing Forrest to that 15th roster spot would cost roughly the same $7M salary-plus-tax hit that Brantley would².

Getting Forrest back on a 2-way would give the Jazz a little extra insurance at PG until they’re sure if Butler can truly fill in there in the event of injuries. If Forrest found a team to give him an offer sheet for a standard contract with some guaranteed money, he could force the Jazz to make a decision. But I’m not sure there’s a huge market for a guard who has made 19% of his 3-point attempts thus far. If he keeps playing well in the Las Vegas Summer League, maybe he’ll catch someone’s eye. Otherwise, Forrest’s most likely scenario will be returning to the Jazz/Stars as a 2-way player.

Other possibilities beyond those four

The Jazz also reportedly agreed to minimum contracts with undrafted rookies MaCiao Teague and DJ Funderburk. These are reportedly “Exhibit 10” contracts, which are fully non-guaranteed deals that give the Jazz the option to convert them to 2-way contracts after training camp. Someone will likely earn the second 2-way spot next to Forrest; it could be one of Teague/Funderburk, or someone else who stands out to them.

If they’re waived in camp, the Stars will have first dibs on their G League rights through the “affiliate player” rules. A lot of camp signings around the league are made primarily to secure a player’s rights for the team’s G League affiliate. This kind of matters to the Jazz, too: the more the Stars can replicate the Jazz system and experience, the more authentic development opportunities they can provide to anybody they send down for a G League stint. So having a good Stars team does help the program overall in that sense.

As we said in Brantley’s case, Teague, Funderburk and anybody else on the fringes still have the opportunity to play their way into consideration for a roster spot. That also goes for the rest of the club’s Summer League roster or anybody they invite to fall camp. Same goes for Juwan Morgan, although the Jazz might have shown their hand when they neglected to issue a QO to the 2-year veteran, and then signed multiple bigs in front of him. Morgan’s Jazz days are probably over unless he really impresses in the rest of Summer League and/or fall camp.

The Jazz can also keep looking for players who may become available outside their current group. Remember: when Ingles and O’Neale became available, the Jazz already had players in those roster spots with guaranteed money. In both cases, they believed in those two enough to go get them anyway, even if it meant eating guaranteed money. That would be a costly play this year because of the tax situation, but if they really feel someone has Ingles/O’Neale type potential to develop into a rotation-quality difference maker, they may bite the bullet. So they’ll keep one eye on the buyout market, waiver wire, and international free agents.

But at this point, there’s obviously a more predictable way for things to play out: if they keep Oni and eventually resolve Butler’s situation, they’re at 14 roster spots, with a total roster cost (salary + tax) of $186.5M. If they keep Brantley/Forrest (or add another player somewhere else), they’ll have a full 15-man roster that costs them somewhere around $192.8M to $193.6M, depending on that 15th man’s NBA experience.

That’s the math part. Now comes the basketball part: can Brantley, Forrest or anybody else show the Jazz enough between now and mid October to justify that additional scratch? Or do the Jazz feel fine with the deep, versatile roster they have built with those first 14 spots?

Those questions are why Zanik’s work is not quite done for this Jazz offseason.