Utah Jazz: 5 options for pick No. 21 in 2018 NBA Draft
By Mason McFee
With the draft upcoming, we take a look at some options the Utah Jazz should consider in the draft if some key contributors depart.
When Gordon Hayward departed the Utah Jazz last offseason, it left fans angry and management worried. The Jazz still had Rudy Gobert, but outside of Joe Ingles and Rodney Hood, their (potentially) bright future suddenly looked very bleak.
While the front office would never say it publicly, they knew that if they lost Hayward, they could quickly go from a near-Finals contender to a rebuild. Being a small-market team doesn’t help matters. Luckily for them, the basketball gods were looking out for them.
On June 11, 2017, the Jazz shipped out Trey Lyles and the No. 24 pick in the draft in exchange for the 13th overall selection. That selection would turn into Donovan Mitchell, your friendly, neighborhood rookie who has already been compared to future Hall-of-Famer Dwyane Wade — and for good reason.
Fast forwarding to this season, Mitchell was the Jazz’s leader in scoring in both the regular season (20.5 points per game) and postseason (24.4 points per game). Scoring is not (or at least, should not be) the sole measure of a player’s greatness; but to put up those kinds of numbers in his first year in the league, well, that’s pretty good.
Channel your inner Adam Sandler again, and fast forward to present day. The Jazz have been eliminated by the Houston Rockets, but they might as well be hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy. They hung relatuvely tough with the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, without their starting point guard, and took the Rockets to five games. If Rubio were healthy, they may have taken them to 6 or 7. This Jazz team is legit, and is here to stay. That’s not to say they’re without flaws, though.
So how can Utah improve? Well, they’re going to be drafting at pick No. 21 in the first round of the 2018 NBA Draft. Let’s take a look at some of the names Jazz fans could hear (and be excited about hearing) commissioner Adam Silver call.