SMF - Just Installed!
This is fascinating if you happen to be in Salt Lake City, watching a young, talented Jazz team ? Utah's franchise is pretty much the polar opposite of the Knicks in every way ? blowing out the defending champion Spurs and closing in on the Northwest Division title and a good seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Back on trade deadline day in 2004 the Jazz made what, at the time, seemed a relatively inconsequential deal with the Suns. The Jazz sent Keon Clark and Ben Handlogten to the Suns for Tom Gugliotta, two future first-round picks, a second-round pick and cash. The Suns needed to dump Gugliotta's big contract to be in position that summer to make a free-agent run at Steve Nash. Gugliotta's injury-plagued career was at its sad end. For the Jazz, the deal was all about the future firsts, one of which was a Knicks first-round pick Phoenix had acquired when it foisted off Marbury on Thomas little more than a month before making the deal with Utah. That pick was protected through 2008-09, the protection dropping from 25 picks to 22. Obviously, the Knicks keep it this year. They keep it again next year if it is one of the first 22, which seems entirely likely. In 2010? It is unprotected. Fast-forward to Tuesday's news conference. In between the thousands of lines Walsh uttered over nearly two hours was the clear implication that, as much as he wants loyal Knicks fans rewarded the next couple of seasons with a product on the court that no longer will embarrass them, they should not expect acquisitions that will instantly turn the Knicks into an Eastern Conference power. In other words, the Knicks won't be dreadful next season, or the season after, but it won't be a shock if they are in the lottery again in 2010. Then, the Jazz will have one of the league's best teams, with Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer in their primes, and a great chance to add another important piece to a potential championship puzzle. Jazz GM Kevin O'Connor, who never seems to get enough credit as one of the league's smartest basketball thinkers, plays it coy when talking about that Knicks pick. ?The only thing I'm looking at that pick,? he said, ?is where it is today. Where it is a year from now, I'll look at it at that point, when we get it. Everything can change. That's two years from now. That's a lifetime.? What can happen to a pick in two years? When the Suns traded Joe Johnson to Atlanta in a sign-and-trade deal in 2005 that brought them Boris Diaw, they also got a first-round pick from the Hawks that was protected through the first three picks in 2007, then was unprotected in 2008. The Hawks ended up with the No. 3 pick last year, drafting Al Horford, likely runner-up in voting for this season's Rookie of the Year. Now the Hawks are about to qualify for the playoffs, which means 16 lottery teams will draft ahead of the Suns when they use that Atlanta pick this June. When a Jazz beat writer asked O'Connor on Friday morning if Walsh, in his first day on the job, had called to try to get that 2010 pick back from the Jazz, O'Connor laughed and said, ?No comment.?
