Jazz-Specific Awards, Volume 3: Comeback Kid + Off-Court Roles

One of the big Jazz successes this year was finding out that Will Hardy is the real deal. (Francisco Kjolseth, The Salt Lake Tribune)

Over the past two days, we’ve been giving past Jazzmen a nod by determining which named should be attached to Jazz-focused hardware, and then honoring current Jazzmen by handing out those fake trophies.

This season, the NBA renamed season awards after former league stars, which led to some fun debates about guys’ respective places in history. It made me wonder what would happen if we gave out Jazz-specific awards to key performers in certain categories each season, and similarly named those trophies after guys who personified the excellence each award celebrates.

We’re doing this a few awards at a time. Today is the final batch of fake awards.

• Monday: We named and then gave away Jazz-focused MVP, DPOY and MIP awards
• Yesterday: We honored past and present Jazzmen with ROY, Clutch, 6MOY, Postseason MVP
• Today: Comeback player, COY, EOY

Today’s portion is a little weird. We’re going to give out an award that no longer exists at the league level, and then we’re going to give out awards for roles that were each occupied by a single person. But that’s OK, it will still give us the opportunity to recap what Utah’s coach and front office accomplished this season.

As a reminder, these aren’t meant to be nominations for league-level awards, just a way to process what happened in the 2022-23 season. A few other reminders on the methodology here:

• No one Jazz player/figure can be the namesake for more than one award.
• Generally speaking, we should recognize guys who actually won the award in question, although I’ve broken that rule and will break it again below.
• The NBA decided not to name any awards after players who are still active. I did not impose that same rule on this exercise.
• With all due respect to the David Robinson Community Assist Award or the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year, I’m focusing on individual awards for on-court stuff.

Here are the last of our Jazz-focused awards for 2022-23, along with the guy I think should have their accomplishments tied to the awards itself.

The Adrian Dantley Comeback Jazz Player of Year Trophy

While we’re at it, we might as well resurrect the beloved Comeback Player award. Dantley won it in 1983-84, a year after missing all but 22 games with torn ligaments in his wrist. He got right back at it, though, leading the league in scoring (30.6 ppg) and missing just three games in that comeback year.

Plus, AD just had to be recognized somewhere here. He’s a top-five Jazz player at worst, and any exercise that aims to celebrate the franchise’s legacy has to include him in one way or another.

2022-23 Winner: Kris Dunn?!

This should probably be Collin Sexton, whom we already honored with the Jazz 2022-23 Sixth Man trophy yesterday. Young Bull played just 11 games last season before a knee injury, and then made his way back to average 14.3 on a good team. But that wasn’t all that unexpected.

The bigger surprise was Dunn reminding the world that he’s an NBA player. He got injured midway through the 2019-20 season, played garbage time in a few games for the ’20-21 Hawks, then got some run on 10-day contracts last year. That’s two and a half seasons where he was basically hanging on in the NBA by a thread. Then he showed up in Utah and dropped 13.2 points per game, somehow shooting 54% from the field and (gasp) 47% from deep.

It’s just a way cooler story, even though a) he only played 22 games, and b) Sexton’s thing is probably more in line with the spirit of the Comeback award. Sexton also matters more going forward.

This is little more than a fun exercise: we’re handing out a fake award that doesn’t even have an analog in reality (anymore). So there’s no reason to be super literal with it. Dunn’s renaissance might wind up a footnote in the scheme of things (if he somehow keeps outside shots falling, it’s at least an interesting discussion). But it was absolutely part of the story of the 2022-23 Jazz in a way that nobody saw coming and that sort of personified the squad’s whole “we don’t care what you think of us” vibe.

The Jerry Sloan Jazz Coach of the Year Trophy

Easy one, with apologies to Frank Layden, who actually won the COY award once. Sloan did not, but he did rack up 1,127 regular season coaching wins for Utah and 196 in the playoffs. Per Basketball Reference, he finished 2nd in COY voting three times, and in the top four a total of nine times. He was also named one of the 15 greatest coaches in NBA history as part of the 75-year celebration.

2022-23 Winner: Umm, Will Hardy

This one doesn’t really work as a yearly Jazz-specific award since the team has exactly one head coach. Alternatively, it could be handed to any member of the coaching staff, but since outsiders don’t get a ton of visibility into the exact remit of every assistant, that would be a tricky one to dole out.

For the sake of this exercise, I’m using this as an excuse to throw some flowers in Will Hardy’s direction.

Just a week or two into the season, I had connected folks calling me to say, “Dan, this guy is for real.” It’s hard to weigh the value of coaching, and it also might take Hardy some time to hit full stride and really instill his philosophies into a competitive version of the team. But when that happens, chances are you’re going to feel really fortunate, Jazz fans.

The Frank Layden Jazz Executive of the Year trophy

Since we screwed Layden out of our fake COY trophy, I decided to include executive of the year so we could get the franchise patriarch some recognition. Layden was an actual EOY winner *and* COY winner after the 1983-84 season, the year the Jazz finally broke through with a 45-37 record, a division title, and a playoff victory against Denver.

2022-23 Winner: Justin Zanik

Like the Jazz COY section above, there’s only one GM to choose from. (Danny Ainge directs and has ideas, but Zanik is the one making the calls.) As with the COY, we could alternatively saw this exists to recognize any front office figure whose job performance enhanced the Jazz, but generally people on the outside don’t have enough understanding of who does what to allocate the “credit” appropriately. That’s fine. We’ll treat this like we did COY: a way to reflect on the collective performance of Zanik, Ainge, and everybody working behind those gents during a pivotal time from a transactional standpoint.

In a year’s time, the Jazz went from being asset-strapped with a roster facing a narrowing window, to having one of the most flexible situations in the league.

It started with the unbelievable haul they got for their 3-time All-Stars: seven 1sts, two first-round rookies, three swaps, and some useful veterans, one of which turned into an All-Star in year one. They got another 1st for career 6.6-ppg scorer Royce O’Neale.

They didn’t get one for Bojan Bogdanovic, but it’s obvious now what the thinking was behind the Kelly Olynyk acquisition. In addition to saving them money so they could make other maneuvers later, Olynyk gave their program a more organized feel. I wrote at the time (and I still feel) that they should have probably extracted something by putting the better player in the Bogey-KO swap, but it’s not a huge misstep that they didn’t get a 2nd or whatever.

Flipping Pat Beverley for Talen Horton-Tucker already looks smart from an asset management standpoint and a get-younger-and-bigger standpoint, regardless of whether THT turns into a long-term piece.

Then they made a deal that sets them up to be a major cap space player AND netted them a premium asset in that Lakers top-4 protected pick. It was a really smart way to combined assets to level up to way more than the sum of those players’ individual values. Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt could have netted the Jazz a couple of seconds each, and Mike Conley could likely fetch them another. That’s five 2nds, plus the Jazz added two of their own to the deal: seven total. But call any GM in the league and offer them seven 2nds in exchange for their top-4 protected pick and they’ll laugh at you. The Jazz got way more value out of that deal than they’d have got by piecing it out — AND there’s no telling if the contracts attached to those hypothetical 2nds would have opened up as much flexibility as the 3-team trade did. They’ll have max cap space this summer, whereas some of the proposals they were looking at if they were to split that trio up into smaller trades had them taking back 8-figure salary commitments for non-difference makers. (Keeping Conley also would have complicated their 2023-24 cap room.)

The Jazz could have said not to adding the seconds, on principle. Then Minnesota doesn’t put D’Angelo Russell in the deal, the Lakers say no a Conley-centered package, and the Jazz don’t get a premium asset. So it really comes down to what you’d rather have a big pile of very fungible seconds, or a single asset that could yield a lottery talent. It would have been bad GM-ing to walk away from that prize over having to include a couple of seconds, one of which will likely be in the 50s anyway (Minnesota gets the less favorable of Memphis/Washington next year, in addition to the Jazz’s own 2025 second). Same goes for if the Jazz had closed up shop when asked to absorb Juan Toscano-Anderson and Damian Jones. If you have a chance to get a potential blue-chip asset for non-All-Stars, you do it. Full stop.

Because that premium asset came attached to more future flexibility, the Jazz have the options to do whatever they want next. They can spend beaucoup bucks this summer. They can wait to pounce with their extra picks when a star becomes available. If the right opportunities aren’t there, they can slow play it and see what comes their way in the draft. They can rent their cap space and amass even more assets.

The Jazz last year had very few options. Now, they can choose to do just about anything they want.

Would I vote for the Zanik/Ainge duo for the *actual* EOY award? Not yet. Because EOY usually goes to a front office that is reaping, not sowing. But the Jazz’s executives have put the team in a fascinatingly flexible position.

Thanks for coming along with us on this journey! That’s 10 awards we attached historical significance to, and 10 individuals we recognized for special 2022-23 campaigns.