Jazz Have Two Trades Left to Maximize Victor Wembanyama Odds

The Utah Jazz will soon face the cold reality of all of their offseason moves and the official start of the NBA regular season. The Jazz roster will not produce an NBA Defensive Player of the Year, a Slam Dunk Champion or multiple All-Stars.

The Jazz do have a new head coach in Will Hardy, a vastly different roster from recent years past, and a plethora of draft picks and salary-cap resources moving forward.

Offseason bombshell trades and maneuvers proved that Jazz executive Danny Ainge desired the organization to start over. Removing Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell from the franchise cleared a definitive path to rebuild the Jazz from the ground up.

Other notable trades of the Jazz offseason included Royce O'Neale and Bojan Bogdanovic. However, the Jazz have retained the services of Mike Conley and Jordan Clarkson — two very familiar faces within Jazz Nation and the Utah community. However, retaining Conley and Clarkson is a head-scratcher for several reasons but especially because of how they decrease the percentages of drafting Victor Wembanyama.

For those who have only viewed Wembanyama on YouTube highlight videos, he has officially performed on U.S. soil and is way better than advertised. He is clearly the top prospect in the 2023 NBA draft, and maybe in league history, and that includes LeBron James.

At 7-foot-5, Wembanyama possesses the skills necessary to become an all-time great, and you would think the Jazz would make every attempt to draft this young phenom.

An unfortunate path to increase a team's chances of obtaining Wembanyama is to tank the season and lose as many games as possible. I've never been a fan of trading players, as one side typically receives the short end of the stick because most trades are not equal in value.

I'm an even bigger advocate of punishing teams who purposely lose games to gain an advantage in an upcoming draft. Losing should never factor in the equation, but it's well-documented how NBA teams have tanked in past seasons.

However, a definitive case can be made for the Jazz to seize a legitimate chance to draft Wembanyama. The Jazz have already traded Gobert and Mitchell and should have already moved Conley and Clarkson for obvious reasons. I don't think a 35-year-old point guard and a former Sixth Man of the Year will agree to just go through the motions and lose games.

Conley is nearing the end of his career and should not be rostered with a young rebuilding franchise. Look no further than the Memphis Grizzlies, who drafted Conley but traded him when the young Ja Morant was selected.

By the time the Jazz complete a rebuild, Clarkson will be approaching the end of his career, and it makes sense to evaluate young players acquired via trade. These newly-acquired players should be playing all the minutes they can handle.

The Jazz are the greatest small-market team in NBA history. Let me state my last case by saying Gobert or Mitchell should not have been traded. It might sound counter-intuitive, but if the Jazz want to get back to the glory days, Conley and Clarkson should be traded to give Jazz Nation a legitimate shot in drafting Wenbanyama.

Follow James on Twitter @jlewNBA.

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