Coming off Utah's worst record in decades, general manager Kevin O'Connor found himself in a very important offseason. Fortunately, he had Utah's highest draft pick in decades to work with. Unfortunately, none of his previous draft picks had worked out for him (except maybe Jarron Collins). Would O'Connor's draft luck improve in 2005?
Season 7: 2005-06
There were three major players in the 2005 draft who could potentially be franchise guys: Andrew Bogut, Chris Paul and Deron Williams. However, Utah's terrible 26-win season could only earn the team the sixth pick, which would have been pretty much worthless for a team in desperate need of a point guard. Luckily, the Jazz also had Dallas' pick (No. 27) from the Pavel Podkolzin trade, and in one of his more brilliant moves, O'Connor was able to send those two picks and a 2006 pick (Detroit's first-rounder from the Carlos Arroyo trade) to Portland for the No. 3 pick, which guaranteed the Jazz would get either Paul or Williams. This was probably O'Connor's best move for the Jazz so far, using his penchant for acquiring picks to give the team exactly what it needed. He already had a fairly good rebuilding team with Okur, Boozer, Kirilenko and Harpring — all that was missing was a point guard. Heading into this draft, it would have been a disaster if the Jazz didn't land either Paul or Williams.
The Jazz spent a lot of time evaluating these two players. They were both excellent point guards who could pass, shoot, get to the rim and be team leaders. But most of the national media declared Chris Paul as the better of the two. However, Kevin O'Connor and the Jazz felt that Deron Williams would be a better fit in Utah. Ultimately, I think it came down to Williams being a whopping 2 inches taller and 15 pounds heavier than Paul. Because we all know that 6-1, 175-pound guys can't last very long in the NBA.
Anyway, Milwaukee took Andrew Bogut with the top pick, as everyone assumed they would, but then Atlanta passed up on a much-needed point guard to take a chance on Marvin Williams, who some considered the "best player" in the draft because of his "potential." I kind of wish the Hawks would've taken a point guard, so the Jazz would've had no choice but to take the other one left on the board. Instead, Jazz fans have for years been subjected to the question: "Should Utah have taken Paul or Williams?" Now that the Jazz had to trade away a disgruntled Williams, this question becomes even more poignant.
Honestly, I don't see much of a difference between the two players. They are both franchise point guards who are coveted by the entire league. Statistically, I'd say Paul does have a slight advantage, but part of that can be attributed to Jerry Sloan's refusal to immediately grant his rookie starter minutes. Paul has played 485 career games, averaging 18.8 points, 9.8 assists and 2.4 steals per game, while shooting .472 from the field, .361 from 3-point range and .854 from the free throw line. Williams has played 506 career games with 17.6 ppg, 9.2 apg and 1.1 spg with .455, .351 and .812 shooting percentages. Paul has won a lot more awards than Williams, but not as many playoff games, which could be attributed to him having worse teammates than Williams. Ultimately, I don't think you can go wrong with either one. So the question of who the Jazz should have drafted boils down to who would have stayed in Utah longer than five and a half seasons.
Interestingly, both Williams and Paul were recently traded away by their original teams for fear of losing them to free agency. But they may have wanted to get out for fundamentally different reasons. From what I've heard, one of Williams' main problems with the Jazz was how Kevin O'Connor kept dumping off pretty good players who were also his friends (like Ronnie Brewer and Eric Maynor). Of course, I've also heard plenty of stories about how big a jerk Williams is and we all know he definitely didn't get along with Jerry Sloan during that awful final half-season he spent here. Meanwhile, all I've heard about Paul was that he just got tired of the New Orleans ownership uncertainty. It took an unusually long time for the NBA to find a buyer for the Hornets, letting the team be league-owned for quite a while with disastrous results, including the NBA's reversal of the original Chris Paul trade that would have sent him to the Lakers. Of course, trying to figure out why these two players wanted to leave is pure speculation, but it is interesting to think about whether Paul would have been a better sport in Utah and would still be playing for the Jazz had they drafted him. I used to defend the drafting of Williams for years, but now I'm beginning to think that Chris Paul might have been a better selection. Of course, putting ourselves back in 2005, I would have to say that O'Connor made the right move. He traded up for one of the best point guards who both seemed virtually equal, so he chose the bigger one. You can't really hold that against him.
With the 34th pick in the draft, O'Connor decided to take another chance on a high schooler named C.J. Miles, passing up on fellow high schoolers Monta Ellis, Louis Williams and Andray Blatche, as well as Ersan Ilyasova and Ryan Gomes. Of those players, I think the high-scoring combo guard Ellis could have found a nice home off the Jazz bench. Instead, we've had to deal with the occasional flashes of brilliance and the long stretches of underachievement from Miles. What I found interesting was that Miles didn't have an agent when he was drafted, meaning he could have gone to Texas and the Jazz would've kept his rights. I thought for sure the Jazz would push Miles into playing and developing at Texas for a few years, but instead, they brought him in to play 23 games his rookie year, beginning the "he's still young" excuse that lasted way too long.
O'Connor also had the 51st pick from the John Amaechi trade, which he used on undersized center Robert Whaley, who had a history of attitude problems, which were demonstrated in a bar fight in Park City involving Whaley and fellow-rookie Deron Williams. During the fight, he cut open his right hand and lied to the Jazz about how it happened and he gave a fake name to the police after the fight. After appearing in 23 games his rookie season with the Jazz, he suffered a career-ending knee injury. Another classic pick by O'Connor! If he really wanted a center, he could have drafted Marcin Gortat, but I guess he thought taking a troubled American was less of a risk than an unknown from Poland.
Now I need to quickly address what may be one of O'Connor's biggest blunders: the Andrei Kirilenko maximum extension. AK had a stellar 2003-04 season, even making the All-Star team. At the time, it was fairly reasonable to expect him to continue to improve. O'Connor also had tons of cap space that he had to use. Unfortunately, Kirilenko only began to regress after signing that massive check that paid him more than $10 million a year. By comparison, Karl Malone didn't start to earn that much until after he won his first MVP award. Slowly, but surely, Kirilenko somehow turned from a rising star into a cap-blocking, impossible-to-move contract. As good as Kirilenko was back then, I don't think he deserved that much money. O'Connor probably got caught up the hype a little too much and/or may have panicked a bit after seeing so many other players signing similar deals, like Pau Gasol, who was considered equal to Kirilenko back then for some reason.
I also think the Kirilenko contract was partly responsible for another O'Connor mistake — letting Raja Bell sign with Phoenix. At the time, Phoenix's offer just seemed too big for the Jazz to match, so we happily waved goodbye to the guard we discovered and watched him win more games and earn more money than he would have in Utah. But looking back on it now, Phoenix was only paying Bell about $4.5 million a year, less than half of Kirilenko's salary. The best move probably would have been to cut Kirilenko's salary in half and give the rest to Bell. But then again, why would you want to pay Bell $4.5 million when you already had Gordan Giricek under contract? Meanwhile, Bell led the NBA in 3-pointers, made the All-NBA Defensive Team twice and helped the Suns come within a breath of reaching the Finals.
Now on to some good news. When it finally became evident that Raul Lopez and Curtis Borchardt would never play another NBA game ever again, O'Connor was able to find a way to dump their contracts on other teams by participating in the largest trade in NBA history, involving five teams, a bunch of role players, and a few expiring contracts. The only thing O'Connor had to give up was Kirk Snyder, and his reward was bringing Greg Ostertag back for one final season. He only played 60 games (with 22 starts) in his last stint with the Jazz, and he really put up abysmal statistics, but I felt he provided a small sense of stability that was sorely missing from the 26-win team. Regardless, being able to get rid of two worthless contracts without having to give up too much was a pretty good move by O'Connor.
O'Connor then filled up the Jazz roster with a few cheap guards — Milt Palacio, Devin Brown and Andre Owens. Palacio was fairly decent, scoring 6.2 ppg and getting 18 starts. But being fairly decent wasn't good enough to extend his NBA career, as his season in Utah was his last in the league. Brown was actually one of my favorites. Just a blue-collar guy who always seemed to be working harder than everyone else. He played 81 games (14 starts) and averaged 7.5 ppg. I was quite sad when the Jazz traded him after this season. Owens was just a roster-filler, and only appeared in 23 games. He eventually played 31 more NBA games with the Pacers a couple of years later, but he never really made an impact on an NBA roster.
Led by O'Connor's big free agent signings of the previous offseason, the Jazz were able to make vast improvements on their 26-win season. It also helped that the injuries were kept a bit more in check. Mehmet Okur led the way with 18 ppg and 9.1 rpg. Sadly, those numbers would end up being his career highs, but we didn't know that in 2006. Behind him was Carlos Boozer with 16.3 ppg and 8.6 rpg. Unfortunately, Boozer took his injuries to a new level this season, making it on the court in just 33 games. Luckily, Kirilenko played well in the first year of his max contract, averaging 15.3 ppg, 8 rpg and 3.2 bpg. However, those numbers also ended up being his best by far during his $86 million deal. But once again, we didn't know that in 2006. We were just happy to be somewhat competitive again and were very excited for the future.
Matt Harpring was solid, if not spectacular, with 12.5 ppg and 5.2 rpg. Although he did play in 71 games, signs of his body's deterioration were beginning to show. Deron Williams only got to start in 47 games his rookie year, but he did average 10.8 ppg and showed enough promise that we began to dare to dream that maybe, just maybe, Williams and Boozer could be the next Stockton and Malone. But the guy who was supposed to be the next Hornacek, Gordan Giricek, was limited to 37 games. He did, however, play fairly decent, scoring 10.6 ppg, but I really did miss Raja Bell this year.
Keith McLeod was the starting point guard at the beginning of the season, and he continued to run the offense well and scored 5.6 ppg. But we all knew Williams was going to be Utah's guy and McLeod was just the placeholder until the rookie was ready. Jarron Collins averaged 5.3 ppg mostly filling in for the injured Boozer, and as I alluded to previously, I think he and the Jazz really benefitted from having Ostertag as a backup. It's funny how you can enjoy a player so much more when he's not the highest-paid guy on the team. Rounding out the Jazz roster was Kris Humphries, who played in 62 games and drew the "youth" excuse a little too much for my liking.
(Quick tangent: I always hate when people excuse bad basketball players because they're young. I don't care if they're only 18 years old. They felt they were good enough to be in the NBA, so they should play like it. They're getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars — if not millions — and I think they should be earning that salary and giving the fans their money's worth.)
Anyway, the Jazz definitely appeared to be back on the right track, finishing the year at 41-41, which would have been good enough for the 6th seed in the East, but was No. 9 in the West. Kirilenko led the NBA in blocks and finally cracked the First All-Defense Team to add to his two Second Team honors, which made that $10 million salary appear justified. However, something would happen to him during the next season (while I was on my mission) that would shatter his confidence and turn him into a slightly-above average player and he would never win such an award again. But like I've already said, no one knew that in 2006, leaving us to excitedly hope that Williams would keep developing, Boozer would be healthy and O'Connor could finally land a decent shooting guard.
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