They went all-in to build this team and never even made the conference finals. The margin for error is virtually nonexistent, and the Jazz are feeling that right now. The existence of small-market contenders is rather cruel. If it feels cruel to harp on a nine-year-old mistake, well, it should. Maybe a healthy Hayward is the difference between a second-round exit and the 2021 championship. Maybe with that star trio in place, Utah can redirect its remaining assets toward the perimeter defense it now lacks.
Maybe Mitchell is so promising that Hayward doesn't feel the need to leave. Maybe the freak accident that robbed Hayward of his All-Star status never happens. If they had? Maybe everything changes in Utah. Though technically teammates for 12 days, Hayward and Mitchell never played a game together in Utah.
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That allowed him to become a free agent again in 2017, when he had blossomed into an All-Star with the cache to bolt for Boston. Instead of the five-year deal Utah could have offered him, he locked in for only three. He took it from Charlotte … but with a caveat. At least two teams - Cleveland and Charlotte - are known to have offered Hayward the max. The Jazz still refused to give him a five-year max contract in restricted free agency, instead daring him to find such an offer on the open market.
Though he expected fair compensation, agent Mark Bartelstein noted at the time that he was not asking for the max. Gordon Hayward, who had just been relegated to reserve duty for much of his third season, wanted a four-year rookie extension. The original sin of this era of Utah Jazz basketball came all the way back in 2013. But if you're looking for the root cause here, you have to go back a lot further. Losing Joe Ingles hurt just a bit too much. He and Donovan Mitchell never quite clicked. Rudy Gobert does become slightly less effective in a playoff setting that deemphasizes his preferred drop-coverage. Their perimeter defense is genuinely terrible. They're all going to have some degree of merit. You're going to hear a lot of explanations of what went wrong for the Utah Jazz in the coming days.