Former NBA All-Star Deron Williams revealed why the Utah Jazz struggles to hold on to top stars for long period of time.
Former NBA All-Star point guard Deron Williams gave the Utah Jazz a lot of good seasons. He was arguably one of the best point guards in the league during his time with the Jazz, showing incredible skill for the position and being a playoff regular with the team.
The Jazz have never attracted top stars and usually rely on developing talent to lead them to glory. Even Williams left the Jazz for the New Jersey Nets.
The Jazz just nuked their 2 star players in Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert to reshape the roster from the ground up. Williams has given some insight into why players end up leaving Utah and why the franchise struggles to add players through free agency on the Real Ones with Raja + Logan podcast.
"I had been around all the best players in the world. I had played in the Olympics. I was trying to recruit everybody. I'm talking everybody. Nobody's coming to Utah… No person I ever talked to was interested in coming to Utah. It just was a reality. So, I felt like I had to go somewhere else."
How Long Before The Utah Jazz Are Contenders Once Again?
If you look at the track record of the Utah Jazz, this is not a team that has missed the playoffs often. Outside a few rebuilding seasons in the early-2010s, the Jazz have been a regular Western Conference playoff fixture for decades. It doesn't look like that will be possible for the current squad, at least not for a few seasons.
The team has pieces that could lead them to some winning seasons from the get-go, but the team will prioritize bottoming out and hopefully hitting big in the 2023 NBA Draft with a different French center up for grabs in Victor Wembanyama.
Hopefully, the Jazz can keep flipping the assets they have and put themselves in a situation where the future is bright for the squad and they can push their chips into the middle and pull off massive trades to get disgruntled stars rather than try and compete with big-market teams for their signature as free agents.
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