Adrian Wojnarowski
@wojespn
The Utah Jazz are acquiring guard Portland’s Nickeil Alexander-Walker and the Spurs’ Juancho Hernangomez in a three-way deal, sources tell ESPN. The Spurs gets guard Tomas Satoransky and a second-round pick, and the Blazers get Joe Ingles, Elijah Hughes and a second-round pick.
That is a pretty crappy trade for Utah. They needed to replace Ingles with a quality rotation player. They failed to do that. They went cheap instead. Penny pinching. And in doing so they have given up on the title.
They are so close to winning a Championship. I hate to see such lack of ambition.
All Utah gave up is Elijah Hughes. Ingles is done for the year and expiring. How can this be bad for Utah? Neutral maybe but I don't see how they lost anything.
They’ve got a contending team. At their disposal to get a piece to replace Ingles they had Ingles’ expiring contract, some mediocre draft picks, and Elijah Hughes. They went with tax reduction and a different prospect guard instead of trying to get a player who could actually get them over the hump in the West. It feels like they could have gotten Eric Gordon for that package with slightly better draft compensation.
So Ingles is the difference between competing for a title and not? A guy who scored 7 pts in 25 minutes? I don't know. Alexander-Walker scores more, rebounds more and is not that much worse 3p% (31% to 35%). He he perfectly fine to come off the bench for them. And Hernangomez may give them some helpful minutes. I see this as Utah getting something for nothing while saving a little money.
No, an improvement on Ingles would be a difference, not a downgrade on his already sub-par year.
Also LOL to Hernangomez giving helpful minutes. Dude’s on his 5th team in 7 months.
I know, Hernangomez is salary ballast but you don't think Alexander-Walker can match Ingles 7.2 pts/gm if given 25 minutes? I don't think Utah is any less likely to win a title now than they were a month ago. Ingles hardly makes any difference and now they have someone else to hardly make any difference. You want them to go all in and get some vet that may or may not make a bigger difference. That is fine. They still might. In the meantime, this is a decent trade for them.
I don’t think a guy with a TS% of .474 will successfully replace a guy with a TS% of .551, no. He might score the same amount of points, but it will take him more shots to do so. For perspective, the difference between how much better Marcus Smart’s (an objectively not good shooter) shooting is than NAW this year is equal to how much better Steph Curry is shooting compared to Smart.
Alexander-Walker is a slightly different, marginally impactful bench player replacing a less athletic, better (more efficient) shooting, marginally impactful bench player. This is a good debate but I don't see this altering Utah's playoff trajectory one bit.
I see this as similar to our disagreement over Grant Williams. Ingles is scoring 7 pts in 25 minutes. Yes, he does so very efficiently, I am sure he has very good shot selection. He filled a nice if inconsequential role for them. Now they have someone else to fill that role. I don't think it matters if Ingles is a little better or not. I am arguing it doesn't matter.
But Utah is better today with an inconsequential bench player that can play over one that is injured and out for the season. Any success they are going to have in the playoffs is going to be about Gobert and Mitchell, not Ingles and NAW.