As frustrating as the past two seasons have been for the Jazz, competitively speaking, at least they’re not in the position of the Cleveland Cavaliers, a playoff team the last two years that faces a major question moving forward. And it has everything to do with what the Jazz handed them, a mystery — a grenade? — the Jazz handed off to them. That question is …
Donovan Mitchell?
What will Donovan do?
Remember when the Jazz and their fans used to worry over such a thing concerning their former star, when he was supposed to be such an integral part of their future?
How’s Mitchell feeling about being in Utah? What’s his mood? Is he tired of Utah politics and a legislature with which he doesn’t as a matter of routine see eye-to-eye? What are his druthers? Would he prefer to play where he was drafted, developed and destined to lead a team or is Salt Lake City too much of a fetchin’ cow town for him, a dusty, distant little outpost out yonder somewhere west of the Wasatch? Would he rather play where the lights shine and burn brighter — locations like New York, a place he knows and loves and a team he rooted for as a kid, or Los Angeles, where Hollywood beckons, or Miami, because … well, South Beach? Can Salt Lake hang onto the man who once was the kid who used to show up unannounced at neighborhood backyard barbecues and at local college football and basketball games?
So much for fans to wonder about.
Now, they wonder no more. Not about that, anyway. They wonder instead about how the Jazz can use their draft picks to do what they haven’t done since Mitchell was traded away — qualify for the playoffs, how they can win more than 31 regular-season games, how they can finish better than 12th in the West.
That’s miles from what Cleveland worries about.
And it’s worse.
The Cavs fret over Mitchell, whether he likes them. They fret over his mood, over his druthers, over whether he wants to go play where the lights shine and burn brighter, over what his departure, should he choose to bolt would mean for their future. Should they do their best to hold onto him or should they trade him and get something in return so he doesn’t walk for nothing?
Flashback-a-rama.
See if any of this sounds familiar.
Mitchell is headed into the final year of a deal with Cleveland that allows him to leave thereafter, if he wants. He played brilliantly at times for the Cavs — as an All-Star and in the playoffs, too — before he was injured and sat out the last two games as his team was eliminated. No mention as to whether Mitchell argued with trainers about whether he should get the green light to play. Did the Cavs do enough with their guard in the postseason — a first-round loss last year and a second-round exit this time to please him? Or did an absence of consistent low-post offensive firepower bother him? Did unfulfilled promise leave him unsatisfied with his surroundings? Did a plethora of team injuries during the regular season and the postseason irritate him enough to shake him loose from any commitment to stick around?
The Cavs can offer an extension to Mitchell that would pay him in excess of $200 million.
Is it enough?
Cleveland obviously wants him. But the unsettling question now hovers over the Cavs and their fans: Does Mitchell want them?
That’s the precarious position a franchise like the Cavs finds itself in — building for improvement in the playoffs, trying to find a way to push the thing forward by maintaining its base and adding what it can. Losing Mitchell would be a blow to a non-destination city whose claim to recent basketball fame came on the back of a near-native son, LeBron James, fulfilling its NBA dreams, and then watching him walk away for … yeah, Hollywood.
The Jazz have zero such angst plaguing them now on account of the fact that they have no hope, at least not immediate, not at present, for playoff improvement.
If being bad is somehow freeing, consider the Jazz free — of fear, of anxiety.
But they are not free of either. They’re just bad, with the unknown as a source of a sort of combo-pack of idealism and desperation.
Draft picks are fine and fantastic, but nobody’s ever seen them get a team into the playoffs or win a playoff game or even score a basket or grab a rebound. They are just kind of hanging out there, lending opaque optimism for a team and its fans that something better might be around the far-distant corner. Unless Danny Ainge can use some of those picks to acquire a ready-made, difference-making player, a star great enough for folks around here to fret over, to wonder whether he will want to play here and stay here.
Which is to say, can the Jazz get back to where they were before they disassembled a team with players worth worrying about? That’s Cleveland’s problem now.
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