Understanding and Valuing the Jazz’s Three Pick Swaps

Current Jazz exec Danny Ainge landed all-pro Jayson Tatum in the draft after pulling off the mother of all pick swaps. (Charles Krupa via sltrib.com)

Rudy Gobert has been gone for some time, and last week, Donovan Mitchell was traded to Cleveland, ending a five-year era of Jazz basketball that was more promising on the front end that what it ended up becoming in before the awkward breakup.

The list of players and assets generated from these two combined trades and one resulting deal is long: nine players (including two recent first-round selections from the 2022 draft), six unprotected first round draft picks, another lightly protected first round pick, and three pick swaps.

If you follow basketball, you probably understand player trades. You understand the movement of future draft picks, protected or not. But the inclusion of several pick swaps is new to the Jazz, and therefore, to Jazz fans who may not follow the entire league.

While a simple pick swap is not that complicated, there are a few nuances with the rights the Jazz received in the 2026 draft. I’ve already fielded several questions about how these various swaps and protections impact each other. Here’s your primer.

2028 Pick swap

Let’s start with the simple one.

In 2028, the Jazz will have the right to exchange first round picks with Cleveland. While the right to swap is technically an asset, it’s obviously not an additional draft pick. To exercise it, the Jazz will have to still possess their own 2028 pick, and they would need to end up in a worse draft position than Cleveland. If they already owned a higher pick than the Cavs, there would be no point in swapping, so the Jazz wouldn’t exercise the right.

In lists of traded picks, swaps are often recorded using most favorable and least favorable language. In this case, Utah, as owner of the swap rights, will own the most favorable of Utah and Cleveland’s picks, and Cleveland will own the least favorable.

Easy peasy, right?

2026 Pick swaps

Two years before they get to the simple case above, the Jazz will encounter a more tangled web of swaps and protections in 2026.

The first reason it’s more complex is that prior to receiving either pick swap, Utah’s draft pick was already conditionally owed to the Oklahoma City Thunder because of the Derrick Favors salary dump, so that takes precedence.

Utah owes its 2024 pick to the Thunder if it falls between the 11th and 30th selections. If not conveyed in 2024, the same protections would apply in 2025, with Utah retaining a pick that’s 1st through 10th, or conveying it if it falls 11th through 30th.

If the pick doesn’t convey to the Thunder in 2025, things get interesting in 2026, thanks to the outstanding pick debt and the opportunity to swap picks with either Minnesota or Cleveland. Sorting though these various obligations has been the most frequent question I’ve heard since Thursday’s Mitchell trade.

The obligation to the Thunder comes first, but there’s less protection. If the Jazz pick lands in the top eight, they keep it and we move on to deal with the swaps, but if it falls ninth or later, the pick goes to Oklahoma City. If the pick conveys to the Thunder in 2026, the swaps just die. The Jazz can’t exercise a swap if they don’t own the pick it’s tied to.

Assuming the Jazz retain their own 2026 pick, either by having conveyed it previously or because it’s in the top eight and therefore protected, next they’ll have the opportunity to upgrade their pick if Cleveland and/or Minnesota have a better pick. In short, they can opt for the most favorable of Minnesota’s pick, Cleveland’s pick and their own.

What’s a little unclear at the moment is exactly how the swap would impact Cleveland and Minnesota. Depending on how the swap rights are written and the order in which the teams finish, there’s a chance the Cavs could benefit from the overlapping pick swaps. The language may be written in a way that the Jazz can simply decide which of the two swap to exercise if both teams have a better pick than Utah. Or, because the Minnesota swap was secured first, there’s a chance it’s a little more complicated.

This only works if the teams finish in a Cleveland-Minnesota-Utah draft order prior to swapping. If that were the case, the language may stipulate that Utah first exchange with Minnesota, as is their right, then subsequently swap the resulting Minnesota pick to Cleveland, in exchange for their pick, the best of the three. It wouldn’t benefit the Jazz at all, but Cleveland wouldn’t have to fall to the third best pick among the two teams.

Whatever happens to Cleveland’s pick, the Jazz’s side of this transaction is clear: if they own a pick at all in 2026, it will be the best of the three once they exercise their right to swap with one or both trade partners.

In any other order of finish between the three teams, the scenario is very simple. If Utah’s pick is the most favorable, nothing changes and the swaps go unexercised. In the other scenarios, the Jazz exercise one swap, and toss the other one in the trash.

What are pick swaps worth?

When I wrote in July about the value of Donovan Mitchell in a potential trade, I mentioned my belief that pick swaps didn’t hold the equivalent value of a first-round pick. Without thinking too much about it, I estimated the value of a swap as the equivalent of half of a first-round draft pick.

About a month later, Riley Gisseman tweeted a more expansive, organized and colorful version of the same thing, based on his research:

Quick comparison of Mitchell's likely packages to recent All-Star trades for draft capital, I'm still seeing the high end as still less valuable than what Utah got back for 30-year-old Rudy Gobert. pic.twitter.com/LbUlMYjwVK

— Riley (@rgiss11) August 22, 2022

It’s great. Where I had hastily counted assets, varying their value only in the case of pick swaps, he spent more time separating the assets into different strata, assigning a point value to each class of asset received in a trade:

• Unprotected first-round picks were worth 4 points each
• Unprotected swaps and lightly protected picks were worth 2 points each
• Heavily protected picks, obviously bad picks, and prospects were worth 1 point each
• Salary filler was worth 0 points
• Negative return contracts were worth -1 point each

This started me thinking about what a pick swap is really worth, because with all due respect to Riley, I think they’re overvalued here, so I started digging into historical first-round pick swaps.

The population

Over the last 23 years, I was able to identify 29 instances of teams trading the right to swap first-round picks. This number comes with a caveat, however: my research involved searching the annual transaction pages at Basketball Reference and searching for the word “swap.” If at any point B-Ref described a first-round pick swap using an different term, I will have missed it. If you know of another swap that was not included in my research table, please let me know, and I’ll add it.

From February 2010 through July 2015, there were twelve first-round pick swaps traded, and it seemed to be a developing trend.

Curiously, that was followed by a four-year period from August 2015 to June 2019 with no pick swaps. During this time, the league considered banning some pick swaps, and while they never did, perhaps they were actively discouraging them behind the scenes.

Since July 2019, the use of pick swaps has exploded. In the past three years, seventeen new picks have been subjected to swap rights because of a trade, including the three the Jazz just acquired.

The results

To date, 15 of the 29 first-round swaps have closed:

Nine of those 15 were not exercised because the team who owned the right to swap was already in a better draft position. In some cases the teams had very similar draft positions, like in 2015, when Chicago, which owned the 22nd pick, did not elect to swap for Cleveland’s 24nd selection. On the other end of the spectrum, there were swaps that were probably known to be useless before the season even started, such as in 2021, when the rebuilding Thunder obviously didn’t elect to swap the No. 2 overall pick with Brooklyn’s 27th pick.

In one additional case, the swap didn’t occur due to protections. Oklahoma City, which owned the sixth pick, would have exercised the option to swap with Houston, which drafted second, but the swap was protected for the top four picks.

In the 2016 draft, Denver exercised the right to swap with New York, moving up from ninth to seventh and drafting Jamal Murray.

In 2017, Philadelphia exercised the swap with Sacramento, moving up from fifth to the third pick, which they then packaged to move up to the top overall pick. Jayson Tatum was later selected with that third pick.

In 2013, Cleveland swapped with the Lakers, improving draft position from 30th to 19th, where Sergey Karasev was chosen. Note that the Cavaliers trade with the Lakers allowed them to swap the least valuable pick they owned. This swap wouldn’t have exercised if it had been limited to Cleveland’s own pick; the 30th overall pick owned by the Cavs originally belonged to the Miami Heat.

In the first pick swap, Chicago exercised the right to swap with New York in 2007, moving from the 23rd pick to the ninth, where the Bulls grabbed Joakim Noah.

In 2015, Atlanta exercised the right to exchange picks with Brooklyn, moving from 29th to 15th, where the Hawks selected Kelly Oubre Jr., who was then traded to Washington.

Finally, in 2017, Danny Ainge and the Boston Celtics exercised the right to swap their 27th overall pick with the Brooklyn Nets, receiving the first overall pick in the process. That’s about as well as a pick swap can turn out. Ainge’s Celtics then traded back to the third pick, getting an extra first rounder from Philadelphia while still getting the guy they wanted — Tatum — at number three.

In summary, nine of the swaps were not exercised, and the five that were resulted in the teams moving up 2, 2, 11, 14, 14 and 26 draft positions.

If you’re the type of person who likes to read the last page of a book first or check out spoilers before you see a movie, I’ll share that upcoming swaps also seem to be headed the same direction: three swaps in the next two drafts will likely not convey (OKC will not likely swap with LAC in 2023, HOU will probably not swap with BRK in 2023, and NOP will probably not swap with MIL in 2024). A fourth upcoming swap projects to be very close in value, so it will probably either not be exercised, or will convey, but both selections will be fairly close (NOP right to swap with LAL in 2023). These projections will not be used in the valuation exercise.

Valuation

Once I knew what had happened with prior swaps, I went in search of a model that values draft picks relative to each other. I eventually landed on work done by Kevin Pelton in 2017 (ESPN Insider required), coincidentally related to the trade that occurred between Boston and Philadelphia with their swapped picks that year.

Pelton analyzed how much value each draft position added during years one through nine, then created a Trade Value Chart. The resulting data tables gave me enough of a valuation mechanism to estimate how much the four teams listed above gained by exercising their swaps.

According to Pelton’s data, the first overall pick in the draft had a value of 4000, the last pick in the first round had a value of 470, and the final pick of the draft – the NBA’s version of Mr. Irrelevant – had a value of 50. Because we’re dealing with first round picks only, I looked at the median first-round pick – the fictional pick halfway between the 15th and 16th selections – which Pelton valued at 1,210. Then I went to work measuring the incremental value in each of the six successful instances of swaps:

1. The Bulls picked 14 picks earlier than they would have without a swap in 2007, for a valuation differential of 1030 on Pelton’s scale. Since the median first rounder has a value of 1210, I’m calling that 85% of the value of a median pick.
2. The Cavaliers swapped up 11 spots, from 30th to 19th, in the 2013 draft, for a valuation differential of 560, or 46% of of a median pick.
3. The Hawks took advantage of a swap to select 14 spots earlier in the 2015 draft, for a differential of 720, or 60% of a median pick.
4. The Nuggets improved their 2016 draft position by two spots due to swap rights. Pelton’s scale says the incremental value between the ninth pick and the seventh pick was 170, or 14% of the value of a median pick.
5. The Sixers also moved up two picks a year later, but even closer to the top of the draft, going from fifth to third. The numbers say the incremental value of this swap was 430, or the equivalent of 36% of a median pick.
6. Finally, in the home run of pick swaps, the Celtics were able to turn the 27th pick in the 2017 draft into the top overall selection, thanks to a now legendary pick swap from the Nets. Pelton’s 2017 data says the value added by this swap was 3380, or the equivalent of 2.79 median picks. This pick swap yielded the value of almost three median first-rounders, but as we’ve seen, it’s the exception.

Wrapping it up

If you add all the incremental value together from our sample of 15 closed first-round pick swaps, we find that they result in a total value equivalent to 5.20 median first-round picks. When divided by the 15 instances, that’s an average of 0.347 median picks per swap, or roughly a third of a first rounder. My initial hypothesis valued a swap at roughly half a first-round pick, and this math reflects an even lower valuation than I estimated.

As a result, I’m not going to get too excited about the upcoming swaps until the time grows closer. Only 40% of them have historically been exercised, and as we’ve seen here, they don’t usually add a ton of value. Hit me up in 2025, when we’ll have a better idea of how the Jazz, Cavs and Wolves will all look in 2026, and whether the Jazz are likely to have a 2026 pick to swap.

But there is one caveat for the Utah Jazz. The one person who gained 74% of all that value, who leaped 26 spots in the draft when the other eleven swaps combined to move up 15 picks, happens to be the CEO of Basketball Operations for the Jazz. Because Ainge has beaten – or smashed – the odds once before, he may feel like he can do it again.

With three swaps in the war chest, Jazz fans should all hope he’s right.

NOTE: Reader @atlhawksfanatic brought two missing pick swaps to my attention about 10 hours after this was originally posted. The items were added to the research table, and figures in the article were updated accordingly. An hour later, @StephNoh of The Sporting News identified the original first-round pick swap, which was also added to the table, resulting in minor edits.