Is Kevin O'Connor a Good GM? Part 5

What? These guys missed the playoffs?! Oops! That was a spoiler alert for Utah's first post-Stockton&Malone season. However, I will have to point out that it really wasn't that bad, if it wasn't particularly good. Kevin O'Connor's main plan was to rebuild the Jazz around Raul Lopez (the future Stockton) and Curtis Borchardt (a taller, more-skilled replacement for Malone), flanked by exciting small forward Andrei Kirilenko and gritty small forward Matt Harpring. Jerry Sloan agreed to stay with the Jazz (even though he could have left and no one would have blamed him), so O'Connor probably thought things would be OK during this rebuilding period.

But it is important to note that the Jazz did anticipate the next couple of years to be rough. I seem to remember a TV special with O'Connor, Sloan and Larry H. Miller bracing Jazz fans for the upcoming rebuilding. They said their main plan was stability from the front office to the coaching staff to even the roster. Miller even promised a return to the playoffs in three years. That did happen, but it was it with Lopez and Borchardt? Let's find out.

Season 5: 2003-04

When people talk about great drafts in NBA history, there are always three years that take the top spots in some order: 1984 (Olajuwon, Jordan, Barkley, Stockton), 1996 (Iverson, Bryant, Nash, Allen), and 2003 (James, Wade, Anthony, Bosh). But 2003 wasn't just top-heavy, it was also incredibly deep. With the 19th pick, the Jazz took another gamble on a European player — "sharp shooter" Sasha Pavlovic from Serbia. I put sharp shooter in quotes because Pavlovic is one of those classic shooters who can't shoot (just ask Boston). In his rookie season, Sasha put up a .396 field goal percentage and a .271 3-pointer percentage, while averaging 4.8 points per game. Not exactly a fitting replacement for Jeff Hornacek. The next season, the NBA held an expansion draft for the Charlotte Bobcats, forcing each team to leave some players available to be taken by Charlotte. It was little surprise that Pavlovic was left exposed. The Bobcats didn't want him, but took him anyway to trade to Cleveland. He didn't do much there and has bounced around the league since. Currently, he's with Boston, not filling in for a hurt Ray Allen like Celtics fans wish he would. Quite frankly, I'm surprised he's still in the NBA. However, I don't blame O'Connor for looking for a shooter in this draft. But, just for fun, let's look at who the Jazz could've grabbed in 2003.

The 20th pick was shooting guard Dahntay Jones, who's a pretty good defender but by no means a sharp shooter. No. 21 was the versatile, but lazy Boris Diaw, who probably would have frustrated Jazz fans as much as Ostertag. The next five picks (Zoran Planinic, Travis Outlaw, Brian Cook, Carlos Delfino and Ndudi Ebi) never really amounted to too much, but No. 27 was high schooler Kendrick Perkins, who was the starting center for Boston when they won the title a few years ago. He probably could have the big man to solve the Jazz's problems, but why draft a center when you already have Greg Ostertag and John Amaechi? No. 28 was high-scoring guard Leandro Barbosa. He could have helped the Jazz, but as being neither a 3-point shooter nor a true point guard, it makes sense why Utah passed him up. The last pick in the first round was current Jazzman Josh Howard. Last year, Howard was mostly hurt, but he did have a few moments of productivity. But when he was at his prime, he was an All-Star who could score, defend, and do pretty much everything else in between. No doubt his talent would have helped the Jazz, but I don't know how he would have fit in with Kirilenko and Harpring, who both played his position.

Some notable names in the second round taken before Utah's No. 47 pick were Jason Kapono, Luke Walton, BYU's Travis Hansen, Steve Blake, Willie Green, Zaza Pachulia, Keith Bogans and Matt Bonner. I think any one of these guys could have made an impact on the Jazz, especially Kapono, who was every bit a sharp shooter as Pavlovic, with the exception of being a senior from UCLA instead of a relative unknown from Serbia. But why should O'Connor take the safe bet in the first round? He hasn't done it yet!

With the 47th pick, O'Connor stumbled onto the biggest steal of his career at this point with Mo Williams. Playing as the third-string point guard, Williams averaged five points per game, and showed enough promise to earn an offer sheet from the Milwaukee Bucks, which O'Connor deemed as too high to match. Williams later went on to average more than 17 points per game for the Bucks and Cavs, and even snuck into an All-Star game while riding LeBron's coattails. Currently, he's buried on the Clippers bench under their overabundance of point guards, and O'Connor still considers letting Mo go as one of his biggest mistakes. Yes, it was a mistake, but I don't think it was one of his biggest. As good as Mo is, I don't think he would have been that good as the Jazz's starting point guard. Even when he was at his best in Cleveland, I didn't really think he was that good of a point guard. He's just a guy who can occasionally hit a few big shots, but not someone I'd consider a leader of a team. But I guess Mo really was the best player left in the draft at that point, as the only other relevant name left on the board was one-time Jazzman Kyle Korver. Now here's an interesting thought: what if the Jazz drafted Barbosa and Korver instead of Pavlovic and Williams. They're essentially the same players, but potentially slightly better. I guess you'll have to ask the guy from Men in Black III who can see an infinite amount of possibilities. Let's get back to reality.

O'Connor entered the 2003 offseason knowing he couldn't keep playing the wait-and-see game. Stockton retired and Malone went to the Lakers, giving the Jazz plenty of cap space for the first time in O'Connor's career. With all this money available, he had to sign somebody. But was there anybody to sign?

His first attempt was Corey Maggette, whom he signed to an offer sheet for a six-year, $42 million contract. (Well, O'Connor did pursue Andre Miller and Brad Miller before that, but both of them turned him down. Apparently ex-Ute Andre would have been too distracted to play in Utah.) I found the Maggette offer odd, though because he played the same position as Utah's two best players (Kirilenko and Harpring). Luckily for the Jazz, the Clippers matched Utah's offer. While Maggette is a good scorer with a tremendous knack for getting to the free throw line, he's a bit of a ball hog and has a curious history of never having played on a decent NBA team. I think he would have been a horrible fit for the Jazz and O'Connor should thank the Clippers for bailing him out.

O'Connor's next official act was re-signing Carlos Arroyo, who had backed up Stockton and Mark Jackson the previous season. Since Andre Miller turned down the Jazz, Utah's three point guards at the start of the year were Arroyo, Raul Lopez and Mo Williams. Since Arroyo was the only one with any kind of NBA experience, he became the default starter, and surprisingly didn't suck. He averaged 12.6 points and 5 assists per game his first year as a starter, and probably would have had more good seasons with the Jazz if it weren't for the summer of 2004. That was when he led Puerto Rico to a stunning victory over USA and developed a big ego, which, I think, ruined his career. If he would have stayed humble and listened to Sloan, he probably could have been something.

O'Connor's next move was truly a perplexing one that only gets worse the more I look at it. He traded a 2004 second round draft pick to the Sacramento Kings for Keon Clark, a 2004 second round pick and a 2007 second round pick. Now, I remember being excited by this. Clark had averaged 11 points, 7 rebounds, and nearly 2 blocks a game with Toronto, and put up similar, if slightly lower numbers in Sacramento. But how were the Jazz able to get him (and two draft picks) for just one second round pick? Doesn't that seem too easy? Shouldn't that set off some red flags? O'Connor probably thought what I just assumed at the time, that the Kings just really needed to clear some cap space, so they were forced to part ways with this emerging talent. While that may have been partly true, I think the main reason had something to do with Clark's drug and alcohol abuse. On his Wikipedia page, it quotes him as saying he never played a sober game in the NBA. Isn't it the job of an NBA general manager to know these things? Did O'Connor hope Keon Clark could turn his life around for the Jazz or was he just doing a favor for Sacramento? Or maybe he just felt like he had to do something with that cap space since he couldn't get the Millers or Maggette. Whatever O'Connor's reasoning was, he ended up paying Clark $5 million to appear in two games for the Jazz. (I'm not 100% sure if the Jazz really had to pay that full amount, but that was his listed salary.)

Following that trade, O'Connor then signed Michael Ruffin. He only averaged 2.2 ppg, but he did get 5 rpg, and was one of my favorite players on this team. Probably because he seemed to work harder and hustle more than most other players, even though he was severely limited with his skill set. Sadly, injuries kept him to just 41 games and the Jazz didn't re-sign him the next year.

By this time, training camp was fast approaching and O'Connor still didn't have much to show from his massive salary cap. He did manage to sign Jason Terry to a three-year, $22 million offer sheet, but the Hawks matched it. At the time, Terry was averaging 17 points and 7 assists a game. Later, he became a legendary sixth man and helped Dallas win the title last year. He probably wouldn't have made a great starting point guard, but his scoring really could have helped the Jazz. This was a tough blow for Utah, especially since it came just four days before training camp.

At basically the eleventh hour, O'Connor signed one more player to fill the roster. This was a then-unknown shooting guard named Raja Bell. O'Connor really lucked out with this one, as Bell proved to be an excellent defender and decent 3-point shooter. Hot Rod Hundley even started a fun "Raja rings the bell!" call. In his first season with the Jazz, Raja played in all 82 games, scoring 11.2 ppg. He is with the Jazz again, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about him right now. I guess I'll save that for when I get to O'Connor's 12th and 13th seasons. But for the 2003-04 season, Bell was a breath of fresh air. He may not have been the shooting guard we initially wanted, but he was the shooting guard we needed.

Right after O'Connor signed Bell, he was finally able to get rid of John Amaechi, by trading him with a second-round pick to Houston for Glen Rice and three second-round picks. The important part of this trade was getting rid of Amaechi, who never played another NBA game after this trade. The little fantasy bonus was having Glen Rice for a couple of days. I knew his playing days were pretty much over, but I still got excited at the idea of having one of the best 3-point shooters of all time on the Jazz. However, he was waived by the Jazz immediately after the trade. I don't know if it was because he didn't want to be in Utah or if the Jazz didn't want him or both. He did end up playing 18 games with the Clippers that season, but all that did was confirm the fact he really needed to retire.

So with Amaechi (mercifully) gone and Borchardt hurt (again), O'Connor had to sign another big man at the last minute, the goofy-looking Ben Handlogten. Although he was basically talentless, he was likable enough, and he managed to play 38 games over two seasons with the Jazz.

Looking back on all this, I can now see why some people predicted this Jazz team to win only nine games. The previous team barely made the playoffs with Stockton and Malone. This team didn't have those two Hall of Famers, and the best new player Kevin O'Connor brought in was ... Raja Bell? It was a rather bleak summer. Here's a look at the roster:

Leading the way was Andrei Kirilenko with 16.8 ppg, 8.1 rpg, 2.8 bpg and 1.9 spg. Right behind him was Matt Harpring with 16.2 ppg and 8 rpg, but he only played 31 games due to a knee injury that really ruined his career. The default starting shooting guard was DeShawn Stevenson, who put up 11.4 ppg, which ended up being a career-high, which is sad, considering people thought he could get 20 a game when he was drafted. Raul Lopez played all 82 games (surprisingly) in his rookie season (two years after the Jazz drafted him) and averaged 7 points per game behind Arroyo.

The oldest player on the Jazz was suddenly Greg Ostertag, playing in the final year of his infamous contract. Remarkably, he had one of the best years of his career with 6.8 ppg, a career-high 7.4 rpg, and 1.8 bpg. As weird as it sounds, Big O really was a huge reason the Jazz didn't completely collapse this season. His backup was Jarron Collins, who had 6 ppg, and the man who was supposed to be the starter, Curtis Borchardt, only played 16 games his rookie year. Because he, Ruffin, Clark and Handlogten couldn't stay healthy, O'Connor had to bring in big men Paul Grant and Mikki Moore midway through the season. Grant only played in 10 games and was out of the NBA when his 10-day contracts ran out. Moore appeared in 28 games and showed he really had some talent and spent eight years in the league, peaking with nearly 10 points and 5 rebounds per game in New Jersey. I was quite sad when he left Utah.

At the trade deadline, O'Connor decided to shake things up with a couple of trades. The first was sending DeShawn Stevenson and a second-round pick to Orlando for Gordan Giricek. By this point, it was painfully obvious that Stevenson was not Utah shooting guard of the future, so getting rid of him was a good move. Giricek initially had a great impact, averaging 13.5 ppg his first 25 games in Utah. For some reason however, he never played that well again for the Jazz and eventually became just another disappointing shooting guard for Utah. But right after the trade, he was a big improvement over DeShawn.

The second trade sent Keon Clark and Ben Handlogten to Phoenix for Tom Gugliotta, a 2004 first-round pick, a 2005 second-round pick and New York's 2010 first-round pick. This was also a good trade because it got rid of the cancerous Clark. Phoenix did this to get rid of Gugliotta's $11.7 million salary. Although he was a one-time All-Star who averaged 20 a game with Minnesota, by 2004, Googs was all but washed up. He did start 24 games for the Jazz, but only averaged 3.7 ppg and 5.2 rpg. I find it odd that it can become nearly impossible for older stars like him to score — he only made 37 percent of his shots, and he was the power forward! But, like I said, O'Connor didn't make this trade for Gugilotta — it was to get rid of Keon Clark and bring in some draft picks, which worked out just fine.

2003-04 was a really weird season for the NBA. Although the Jazz finished with a surprising 42-40 record, they missed the playoffs by one game. But in this year, the Eastern and Western Conferences were as wide apart as they've ever been, so a 42-40 record earned Miami home court advantage, while it wasn't enough for Utah. Even the Finals were really weird. The Lakers were by far the best team, but lost to the Pistons because Malone was hurt and Kobe and Shaq were having a hissy fit.

It was a rather rough season for Kevin O'Connor. He wasn't able to sign anybody he wanted in the offseason despite having oodles of money to do it with. He took another gamble in the first round on a disappointing European, but had another good second-round pick. He found a "diamond in the rough" in Raja Bell, and was able to get rid of some dead weight in DeShawn Stevenson and John Amaechi, while stockpiling a plethora of draft picks. Altogether, 18 different players suited up for the Jazz, but Jerry Sloan was somehow able to keep things together enough to squeak out a winning record. Not bad for a team that was supposed to win only nine games.