Why Utah Jazz should turn into sellers at the trade deadline

With the NBA’s Feb. 8 trade deadline quickly approaching, here’s why the Utah Jazz should turn into sellers at the trade deadline. 

The end of the month of January marks an important time throughout the NBA.

Not only does it signify that we are in the home stretch of the regular season, but January is also a time when teams throughout the association decide whether they want to focus on a postseason run or look ahead to the future.

For the Utah Jazz, they are somewhat in the middle of those two options.

Utah, which enters Wednesday’s road game against Detroit Pistons with a record of 19-28 overall, currently sits in 10th place in the Western Conference. At first glance, that’s not a terrible record or position to be in. Although they are on the outside looking in as of now, the Jazz aren’t out of the playoff hunt in the West by any means.

But in the last 23 games, Utah has been in somewhat of a free-fall, losing in 17 of those 23 games, pushing them to five games back of the Denver Nuggets and the eighth and final playoff spot in the West.

That has forced the Jazz to make a decision with what they want to do with the rest of their regular season, mainly if they want to try and make a late-season push toward snagging a low playoff seed or shift their focus to the future.

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While Utah officially decides what it wants to do before the Feb. 8 NBA trade deadline, here’s why the Jazz should be sellers rather than buyers.

One thing that Utah has currently on its roster that works in its favor is a bunch of flexibility. Rudy Gobert, Joe Ingles, Donovan Mitchell, Tony Bradley and Royce O’Neale are the only players on the Jazz roster whose contracts will (for now, at least) be on the books following the 2018-19 season. 

The rest of Utah’s pieces — which consist of 10 players, not including two-way contract players —  could be off the books for the 2018-19 season (six players) or next year will be the last year of their contract (four players).

Basically outside of Gobert and Mitchell (and probably throw Ingles in as well), who you’d assume are the closest thing to untouchable on the trade market, you get the feeling that any player on the Jazz roster is available for trade.

There are a lot of solid, talented players in Utah, which is why the Jazz will definitely have a chance to move some pieces as sellers.

Another reason Utah should take a long look at a roster shakeup before the Feb. 8 deadline is to try and gain assets, mainly draft picks. The Jazz currently hold the rights to their own first and second round draft picks for the upcoming draft. The first round pick, assuming Utah continues on the road it’s currently are on, should be a decent lottery pick.

But the Jazz have players like Derrick Favors, Rodney Hood and Joe Johnson — all of which are in the final year of their contracts — as well as Ricky Rubio and Alec Burks — whose contract years will appear next season — that could be attractive pieces for other NBA teams who are trying to make a run in the postseason and, in return, could send a few assets Utah’s way as the Jazz shift their focus to the future.

Building around players such as Gobert, Mitchell and Ingles in free agency and with at least one (with the potential of more) draft picks could give Utah a nice boost in trying to quickly rebuild following the loss of Gordon Hayward last summer.

Next: 2017-18 Week 15 NBA Power Rankings

That’s why, as trade deadline approaches, the Jazz should focus on being sellers and shifting their focus to the future.