Danny Ainge has had his share of making moves that most may not understand at first. Proof of that is when he was still with the Boston Celtics. Now, he hopes to do the same with the Utah Jazz.
After being named the CEO of Basketball Operations of the Utah Jazz, trading away Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell came as a bit of a surprise. The duo has been the anchor of the NBA team although that run hardly lasted an entire NBA season.
Good in the regular season wars, the Jazz often fell short of advancing deep in the NBA playoffs. With that formula not working, Ainge now hopes to start fresh and target fresh talent. Ainge clarified this in an official statement.
“It was clear that in order to optimize our opportunity to create a team that could truly contend and establish sustained success, we needed to transition our roster,” Ainge said in a statement. “In trading Rudy and now Donovan, it was a rare opportunity to maximize our ability to get quality talent and picks to best position us moving forward. We have a plan in place to help us assemble the championship team our fans deserve. It will take time to craft our roster. We all understand the work ahead and are committed to our vision.”
In an exclusive interview by PTV Sports with renowned basketball writer Roland Lazenby, he compared the moves as something similar to what Ainge did when he took in Kevin Garnett back in 2007.
“Well you know, Danny Ainge has established a pretty solid reputation as a very, very good basketball executive in the NBA. He obviously came out of the Boston Celtics organization which was built by the great Red Auerbach, perhaps the ultimate NBA executive for arranging KG deals. This is a KG deal for the future of the Utah Jazz that team has been good but it really sort of gotten to where it was going to get. It wasn’t going to get any better. There were some chemistry issues,” Lazenby explained.
Lazenby was referring to the trade where the Celtics acquired Garnett in exchange for Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes, Sebastian Telfair, Gerald Green, Theo Ratliff, cash considerations, Boston's 2009 first-round draft pick (top 3 protected), and the 2009 first-round pick which Minnesota traded to Boston in the Ricky Davis–Wally Szczerbiak trade of 2006.
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