Contrary to popular reports, the Utah Jazz not pleased with sliding in the draft.

The Utah Jazz are happy they kept their pick but not where it landed.

The Utah Jazz own the tenth pick in the draft. It is not ideal, admittedly. On the surface, it may appear to be so; after all, the draft is an excellent location to find athletes not only for tomorrow, but also for now. You may want Reed Sheppard, but he may not be ready to play meaningful minutes right now. So you can trade him or the selection to get a guy like Devin Booker, who is ready to play.

So the 10th overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft doesn’t seem like the worst possibility, right? Well, according to some, the Jazz were pretty indifferent to the fall. They had the 8th best odds of obtaining the first overall pick, or another way of saying that, they were most likely to obtain the eighth overall pick in the draft.

However, that was not to be, as the Jazz slid from eighth to tenth place in the draft despite having significantly higher odds of getting the fourth pick. In doing so, they keep their choice, which is a plus, but fall two spots lower than expected. It might have been worse, though, because if they had finished 11th, they would have lost their pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder, who have had enough of them.

So when it was revealed that the Jazz were unconcerned with the decline, many people, including ourselves, were surprised. Why wouldn’t you be upset that you dropped as low as possible while still keeping your pick? After all, the reason you got the choice is that you gave up a full season and another year of your best player’s peak. Clearly, this choice was important. As it turns out, it did matter, and according to a new KSL article, the team was neither happy nor indifferent.

KSL posted a new piece where they talked to Utah Jazz VP of Player Personnel Bart Taylor. Apparently, according to Taylor, they were anything but happy, saying;

“”Obviously, not happy about it; we’d rather stay at eight or move up. But we’ve been studying the draft already for the eighth pick. And there’s still a lot of players there that we like. And I think we’ll still get a good player at 10.””

Now, this is a bit different from what we heard before and it’s far more fitting with what we were hoping for. After all, why biff an entire season if you’re just going to be pretty nonchalant about the reason why.