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SALT LAKE CITY – The finals of the NBA conference are set: the Golden State Warriors will host the Portland Trail Blazers in the Western Conference Finals and the Milwaukee Bucks host the Toronto Raptors finals in the Eastern Conference.
And although Utah Jazz left the playoffs early, there are some positives from the NBA playoffs that could give the Jazz an optimism for the future of the franchise.
The first thing that stands out for the remaining four teams is that aside from Golden State in Oakland, none of these teams are in the big cities of the NBA. Although Toronto is a major metropolis in Canada, it has never been an independent destination, neither Milwaukee nor Portland.
These teams have largely integrated the conference finalists into editorial, intelligent spending for lower level autonomous agents and opportunistic transactions.
Milwaukee has recruited Giannis Antetokounmpo, a MVP candidate, with the 15th choice in the draft draft of the 2013 NBA, which is rather awful. They acquired star player Khris Middleton as a touchdown of the Detroit Pistons in an exchange against Brandon Jennings. Eric Bledsoe joined the team to rebuild his career after a bad spell in Phoenix. They recruited Malcolm Brogdon in the second round. The rest of the list was built with low-cost free agents or punctual transactions seeking to push the list above.
The Trail Blazers also spotted, finding Damian Lillard of Weber State in the middle of the draw, while CJ McCollum was in the same throw of 2013 as the Bucks Antetokounmpo. Portland has received big contributions from former Jazzmen Enes Kanter and Rodney Hood, who have largely scraped the scrap of the NBA this year. They also constitute a list composed mainly of small signatures of free agents.
Similarly, aside from trading for Kawhi Leonard, who is a true superstar, the Raptors form an alignment based on opportunistic trading, including Kyle Lowry, who has become five-time All-Star in exchange for a first-round pick. Pascal Siakam, arguably the Raptors' second best player, was drafted with the 27th pick in the 2016 NBA draft.
These three teams did not have to rely on the attraction of their city to bring star players and built their alignment through excellent screening and an understanding of the needs of their team in freedom. The good draft was the cornerstone of the Jazz – the one who led them both, Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell.
With the exception of Joe Johnson, who contributed to the Jazz, the changes of free agencies that change their franchise have also escaped the team.
The problem for the Jazz, and it should not be overlooked, is that three of the remaining four teams have at least one of the top five players in the NBA, the Warriors probably holding two of the best players Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. .
Each of these players can take over and accomplish what seems impossible in any match and at any stage. Neither Gobert nor Mitchell have shown themselves capable of doing so on the greatest regularity of the stages.
Portland, who lacks a real top 5 players, still presents the talents of Lillard, who showed that he was an offensive weapon from outside the half-court and threatened to score 50 points on the biggest stage of the NBA. Although Mitchell can get there, he has not yet demonstrated his ability to do so.
Jazz should be comforted by the fact that premature exit does not mean an imminent destiny. But beyond that, the surviving teams have more in common with the Jazz than we saw the previous season, and playing in a big city may not be the only way to success in the NBA.
The Jazz ended up with a first-round exit, just like Portland and Milwaukee last season. Maybe next season, the Jazz will play until the end of May.
Ben Anderson is a contributor to KSL.com, follow him on Twitter @BensHoops. Listen to it 2 to 6 am Monday to Friday with Kyle Gunther on ESPN 700.
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