The Utah Jazz shocked the basketball world on Friday after news broke that they had pulled the trigger on a trade deal that would send three-time Defensive Player of the Year winner Rudy Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for a major haul. While there have been rumors of a Gobert exit for quite some time now, it still came as a bit of a surprise for many once it finally went down.
For the record, the Jazz got Malik Beasley, Patrick Beverley, Leandro Bolmaro, Walker Kessler (the 22nd pick from the 2022 NBA Draft), Jarred Vanderbilt, and no less than four future first-round picks. To say that Utah received quite a package in exchange for Gobert would be a complete understatement.
At the onset, you wouldn't be wrong to think that the Jazz still lost a major piece in this deal. After all, it's nearly impossible to replace a guy like Rudy Gobert, who himself has been an integral part of Utah's core over the past few years. However, according to Tony Jones of The Athletic, the Jazz determined that it was time to pull the plug on this botched experiment:
At the same time, the sources say, the Jazz saw Gobert’s super-max contract as a hindrance. Utah’s current core reached its peak as a second-round playoff team, and Ainge thought it needed to move Gobert to break free from that.
After signing a massive $205 million supermax extension with the Jazz in 2020, Gobert now still has four more years on his current deal. He's set to pocket an average of $42.4 million over the course of the next four seasons. Utah has not found success with its current core, and the front office determined that the best course of action was to part ways with Gobert and his gargantuan deal.
If you look at things from this perspective then it wouldn't be hard to see that the Jazz could be considered as the big winners out of this deal.
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