I'll admit I've been putting this season off because of how painful it was. Not so much for what the Jazz did, but what Kevin O'Connor did. I really see this year as the turning point where O'Connor started to subtly and slowly ruin the team that made it to the Western Conference Finals. This team had a good, strong rotation and their oldest player (Memo Okur) was only 30. But what O'Connor did and did not do in this and the next season completely destroyed his second rebuilding plan, which was actually working. (I also blame Greg Miller, as well, but for simplicity's sake, I'll direct everything at O'Connor.) So, I kind of view this year as the beginning of the end, hence my great reluctance to analyze it. Nevertheless, I will bravely push ahead!
Season 11: 2009-10
Coming off a 48-win season, the Jazz had the 20th pick in the 2009 draft, which O'Connor wanted to use on a backup point guard, which I feel was the right choice here. The Jazz roster was looking pretty good everywhere, but was pretty thin in the backcourt. Ironically, every other team in the late teen and early twenties of the draft also wanted a point guard. Jrue Holiday, Ty Lawson and Jeff Teague were all taken immediately before Utah's pick, leaving Eric Maynor, Darren Collison and Rodrigue Beaubois as the best available points. Collison has had a better career so far (he's now the starting point guard for Dallas), but I don't think he would've lasted more than half a year in Utah like Maynor did, so I won't say O'Connor made the wrong draft pick here, but I do say he made the wrong decision by trading Maynor away so soon (more on that later). On a side note, I think it's interesting to point out O'Connor could have drafted current Jazzman DeMarre Carroll or some other big names like Omri Casspi, Taj Gibson, DeJuan Blair or Jonas Jerebko, but none of those guys would have filled an immediate position need like Maynor did.
In the second round, O'Connor used the 50th pick on Croation big man Goran Suton, who failed to make the team at training camp and is currently playing in Zagreb. The only big name left the Jazz could have grabbed at this point was Patty Mills, who is now making a decent living as Tony Parker's backup. But why would the Jazz take two point guards in the same draft that saw Minnesota take four points? (Yeah, the T'Wolves did trade a couple of them away, but it still was quite a perplexing night for them.)
The next big move O'Connor made was matching Portland's offer to Paul Millsap. Not only was Millsap already a fan favorite for his work ethic, but he was poised to replace Carlos Boozer, who had missed most of last season with myriad injuries and openly talked about opting out of his contract to get a big raise from another team. Only Booz didn't find anyone willing to pay a guy who jogged through 30 games, so he was forced to return to Utah for one more season. Instead of kicking the cancerous Carlos off the team, O'Connor decided to ride out his final year and hope for the best. I really wish he would have looked to trade him away earlier and committed fully to Millsap. At least he didn't let Millsap go to Portland.
One fun thing that happened this year was a surprise training camp player making the team. Undrafted shooting guard Wesley Matthews surprised everyone and quickly became my favorite player. He just worked so hard and had a great ability to make the occasional impossible shot. He played all 82 games, started 48, and averaged 9.4 points per game. Sadly, that wasn't enough for O'Connor to keep him the next season when Portland offered an "outrageous" $6 million a year contract. Just ask Blazers fans how much they regret that. Seriously, with Maynor and Matthews, it looked like the Jazz had resolved their backcourt issues for the foreseeable future. But the Jazz were too worried about the salary cap to keep them.
Now here's where things get ugly. By December 2009, it was painfully clear that Matt Harpring would never play another game of basketball, but he still had one year left on his contract for $6.5 million. Now, I really loved Harpring as a player, and he really seems like a nice guy, but is it ethical to take a $6.5 million paycheck when you can't work? Also, why couldn't the Jazz work out some injury-insurance clause with the NBA to get out of this contract? It just doesn't seem right for a team to be obligated to pay a person who is not contributing in any way, shape or form to the team's success. But that is exactly what happened. The Jazz had this sizable contract clogging up the salary cap and had to dump it. Luckily, they were able to find a team that could absorb the dead weight. However, they wanted an asset in return. So on Dec. 22, Kevin O'Connor traded Matt Harping and Eric Maynor to the Thunder for the rights to Peter Fehse. Fehse, a big man from Germany, was a 2002 second round pick who never made it to the NBA and probably never will. O'Connor praised the trade as a great opportunity to avoid the luxury tax and only pretended to be a little sad at losing Maynor, calling him the price one had to pay to create flexibility in the salary cap. Meanwhile, Andrei Kirilenko was making $16.45 million and Boozer $13.5 million. (Did O'Connor even try to trade these guys or was just that nobody wanted them? Both seem quite possible at this point.) One of the biggest opponents to this trade was Deron Williams, who had just lost probably his best backup ever. In his 26 games, Maynor averaged 5.2 points per game and showed plenty of potential. But O'Connor traded him away for financial reasons, which made D-Will upset. Watch for this trend to continue.
To replace Eric Maynor, O'Connor signed Sundiata Gaines, who quickly grew to fame by hitting the game-winning shot to cap an exciting, come-from-behind victory over LeBron's Cavs. Gaines only played 32 games with the Jazz and has since bounced around the league, failing to live up to that one amazing shot against Cleveland.
Not long after that, O'Connor decided the Jazz needed to dump more salary, which he did by sending Ronnie Brewer to Memphis for a 2011 first round pick. Of course, Brewer was only making $2.7 million that year, but as O'Connor explained, the Jazz had a "logjam" at that position with C.J. Miles, Kyle Korver and the newly-discovered Matthews. But Brewer had started 53 games for the Jazz at that point, averaging 9.5 ppg and a team-high 1.6 steals per game. Yes, he was a pretty awful shooter, especially from the foul line, but he was probably the team's top defenders and one of Deron Williams' favorite teammates. Twice in one season, O'Connor made a trade that hurt the team basketball-wise in the name of avoiding the luxury tax. And for the second time this season, O'Connor upset the face of the franchise, D-Will. Now, I'm not saying teams should always pander to the whims of their superstars, but I don't think it's unreasonable for anybody to be upset with a team that trades away valuable assets for virtually nothing just because that team has decided to be cheap. This Brewer trade was slightly better than the Maynor one because you can actually do something with a first round pick, but in terms of upsetting Utah's best player and making the team worse in the short run, it became a rather terrible trade.
O'Connor then had to sign one more player to keep the Jazz at the minimum roster size. How weird is that? The Jazz didn't have enough players on their roster in February? The lucky replacement for Brewer was Othyus Jeffers, who only played in 14 games and has been bouncing around the league since.
As it turns out, perhaps the single greatest factor toward any Jazz success this season was Carlos Boozer playing in a contract year. After he got embarrassed in the free agent market, he finally realized that he should be healthy for once, so he played 78 games and led the Jazz with 19.5 ppg and 11.2 rpg. Deron Williams was right behind him with 18.7 ppg and 10.7 apg. Memo Okur put up 13.5 ppg and 7.1 rpg, but he got hurt in the first quarter of the first playoff game and was never the same after that. Andrei Kirilenko only played in 58 games, but he did average 11.9 ppg, which wasn't too bad considering how he'd been playing in recent years. (Still not worth $16 million, though.)
Paul Millsap showed he deserved the bigger Portland contract by putting up 11.6 ppg and 6.8 rpg off the bench. C.J. Miles averaged a tantalizing 9.9 ppg and Kyle Korver scored 7.2 ppg but only played in 52 games. (Apparently their combined efforts were enough to justify the Brewer trade.) Rounding out the roster was Ronnie Price, Kyrylo Fesenko and Kosta Koufos, who all did just a little bit more than nothing.
Despite the trade turmoil, the Jazz managed 53 wins in 2009-10 and even beat the Denver Nuggets in six games in the first round. That was a pretty enjoyable series because my roommate was a big Nuggets fan. It was odd, though, that my girlfriend (yes, I once had a girlfriend!) became a Carmelo Anthony fan because he "smiled a lot." Unfortunately, the Jazz took no momentum from this win and got swept by the Lakers in the second round. I guess that's what happens when you don't have Brewer to guard Kobe, you don't have Okur to stretch the defense, and the undersized Boozer-Millsap combo gets destroyed by Gasol and Odom. It was a pretty pathetic end to a rather frustrating season. I could see a lot of potential on the roster, but Kevin O'Connor kept messing things up by trying fix his previous mistakes of grossly overpaying Kirilenko and slightly overpaying Boozer. Sadly, the next season I'll have to write about may be the worst Jazz season I ever witnessed, so it might take me another two months to get that one out.
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