The Utah Jazz have no plans to break up the band.
Gordon Hayward (player option), George Hill and Joe Ingles make for a trio of pivotal, and thus expensive, free agents. The Jazz have no chance of evading the luxury tax if the plan is to re-sign them all. Hayward is getting max money, Hill could see offers in excess of $20 million annually and Ingles has played his way into an eight-figure salary per year. Surely that’s enough to get the Jazz thinking twice about everyone not named Hayward—or perhaps even Hayward himself.
Apparently not.
From The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski:
Utah general manager Dennis Lindsey and coach Quin Snyder have done everything right in constructing a burgeoning Western Conference contender, but they’ll have to withstand the Boston Celtics’ push for Hayward on July 1. Winning a playoff series, getting a crack at the Golden State Warriors, gives Hayward a better prism with which to imagine his Utah future.
The plan for Utah is unmistakable: Offer Hayward a max deal, re-sign point guard George Hill and turn these 51-win Jazz toward 60 victories and push for a conference finals appearance sooner rather than later.
Everything hinges on Hayward. If he sticks around, the Jazz can pay whatever it takes to keep Hill and Ingles. If he leaves, investing big money in an over-30 Hill and Ingles, who turns 30 in October, becomes borderline pointless.
Assuming the Jazz are able to retain all three, there will still be changes to the roster, many of them probably noticeable. Lindsey cannot spend the franchise into oblivion. With Dante Exum and Rodney Hood eligible for extensions and Derrick Favors entering free agency in 2018, he’ll have to make cuts elsewhere. Both Favors and Alec Burks figure to be salary-dump candidates if the Jazz are paying through the teeth for Hayward, Hill, Ingles and Rudy Gobert.
Those possible changes, of course, beat the alternative—which, even with Gobert in the fold, would still consist of starting over.
