The impending NBA trade deadline had clearly been weighing on many of the Utah Jazz’s players over the past few days.
“I mean, if you haven’t noticed, there’s been a cloud hanging over us for a little while,” Rudy Gay said late Wednesday night.
And when the Jazz swung a three-team trade that shipped out four of their players an hour before tipoff against Minnesota — including beloved locker room leader Mike Conley — that cloud became a downpour.
Those who remained played a mostly lifeless, shellshocked game, which resulted in a 143-118 loss to a Wolves team that was no less short-handed but apparently far less dispirited.
Postgame, in the locker room, with whatever game-time adrenaline they had mustered now worn off and the reality of an immediate future sans Conley, Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker setting in, the vibes were less than immaculate.
The plucky, fun, overachieving team had just been gutted. And even if they all were all fully expecting something to happen, perhaps even knew on some level that something was going to happen, they nevertheless all appeared thoroughly unprepared for it when it did.
Rookie center Walker Kessler, experiencing his first NBA trade deadline, was visibly shaken postgame. The normally gregarious 21-year-old gave perhaps his shortest interview of the season, though arguably his most emotional.
“They’re all great guys, and you get close with them, but it’s the NBA, so I understand,” he said. “… You know trades are a legitimate thing, but to go through it … I’m a very empathetic person, so you feel for them. But I’m not calling anybody out or saying anything was done wrong, because it’s part of the business, but it’s definitely a hard thing to go through.”
Kessler’s youth was undoubtedly a factor in his visceral reaction. Then again, Gay, the most grizzled player on the team, was equally shaken by both the departure of his close personal friend, and the sudden bottoming out of the roster.
“It’s a tough one because Mike is somebody I’ve known for 20 years — that’s not gonna go anywhere, but …” he said, trailing off. “He’s the guy who got everything together. … I think everybody was thrown off a little bit. He’s been the guy that’s kept me sane for the past year and a half.”
The Jazz wound up not making any additional moves before Thursday’s 1 p.m. MT trade deadline. But Wednesday’s trade — in which the Jazz acquired former MVP and current Sixth Man of the Year frontrunner Russell Westbrook, forward Juan Toscano-Anderson, center Damian Jones, and a top-four-protected 2027 first-round pick from the Lakers — was impactful enough.
Jordan Clarkson, now the team’s longest-tenured player, and Conley’s backcourt mate in the starting lineup this season was recalling some of their best moments from their four years together — bonding in the Orlando bubble a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, helping the Jazz to the best record in the NBA.
He’s been traded a few times himself, he knows the business component of the league. That doesn’t make it any easier, though, when a guy who’s not only a crucial component of the roster but also one of your good friends is suddenly not there anymore.
“It’s definitely tough losing a guy like Mike — that leader, great point guard, the guy that makes everybody’s life easier on the court, and his energy off the court and what he brings to the team, a guy who was never down, I never thought he had a bad day, a guy who just took everybody for who they were. It’s a big loss,” said Clarkson. “… The guy was like Yoda, honestly. He had so many stories and had an enlightened [sense] about him that you’d just listen to him. … Those things, you don’t take for granted in this league, especially how he was as a person.”
The timing of the deal coming as close as it did to tipoff was all the more jarring.
Just a short time before, with the trade rumored but not yet official, coach Will Hardy had spoken of trying to create an atmosphere of normalcy, of trying to get players to buy in to the idea that it was just another average, ordinary day with one of 82 games on the schedule about to take place.
Having one starter, two rotation guys, and a deep bench player suddenly pulled for “personal reasons,” as it appeared on the updated injury report, quickly scuttled that notion.
“I came back from my [pregame] shooting time, and those guys were in street clothes, so I kinda figured something happened,” said All-Star forward Lauri Markkanen. “… It’s crazy. It’s part of the NBA — we all understand that. I’ve had teammates get traded after the pregame meeting, even closer to the game. It’s always tough, you’re not gonna get used to it. It’s the human side. … The human part kicks in.”
Talen Horton-Tucker, already a fourth-year vet despite being just 22 years old, found himself balancing absolute shock and also, somehow, the total normalcy of just another component of life as a professional basketball player.
“It was surprising, but it’s the NBA, so you’ve got to be ready for any situation. But getting close to guys, it’s always going to be hard,” he said. “We all dapped up, said our goodbyes to each other. I told Mike ‘I appreciate you’ for the type of person he is, being really open with the younger guys and teaching them, being a super-vet.”
Gay, meanwhile, was trying to convey the weight of experiencing the trade deadline to those asking him about it, and effectively concluded that the average person simply couldn’t ever properly appreciate the gravity of the experience.
“I really, honestly don’t think y’all understand how hard it is. I don’t think any of you guys are moving your families,” he said. “It’s definitely tough. It is something we signed up for and it’s part of the league. [But] that’s more what we’re worried about — people as people.”
Now, those who remain will turn their attention to trying to carry on.
A few of them put on a brave face and spoke rationally about keeping on keeping on.
Markkanen noted that while it was tough to be in the locker room just then, because they all missed the “great dudes” now gone, there would be an emphasis on getting things figured out: “I still like our group of guys. We can get a lot better with this team — I believe that this team can do big things.”
Clarkson, meanwhile, insisted that the team’s existing imperatives would not change, even if the personnel did. The Jazz will continue to focus on, “Building good habits, trying to compete still, trying to win games. … I don’t look at this game tonight as doing justice on what’s going to happen in terms of us competing and trying to win.”
There’s no doubt that will be a tall order, though. Probably even an unrealistic one.
In trading away four players for a likely buyout candidate and two players on the fringe of the rotation for a Lakers team that frankly had been worse than the Jazz for most of the season, Utah’s front office made its intentions clear. The priority in this deal was shedding future salary and taking a swing at a potentially very good future draft pick.
Gay was not in a mood to toe the company line about still trying to win, noting that there was time still before the deadline to make yet more moves.
Asked if he was now considering his own future, he didn’t bother to deflect or equivocate.
“I’d be crazy to say no. With that move, we know where the organization is going,” Gay said. “I don’t know. I mean, I think at this point in my career, I do want to win and be a part of a team that’s trying to get to the promised land, so to say. But no matter what I’m gonna be a professional.”
