Jazz general manager Kevin O'Connor spoke Saturday with the media.
O'Connor revisiting the Deron Williams trade: Deron never said, 'Hey, you better trade me, you better get what you can for me.' Just in having been in the league for a year or two; having looked at what the landscape was and having seen what the deal that one of the other two teams was probably not going to get and probably would — big market: you lose somebody and maybe you go after somebody else. When I looked at it I just felt like the number of games that would be played before some kind of possible public announcement was about 20 or 25, at most. And then with the lockout to the trading deadline, how many games it possibly could be, as an example. We just felt that we were in a situation where we could get something that we could build on.
… This was not easy for Greg [Miller] to look out there and say, 'Hey, I'm trading a marquee player that's an All-Star in the prime of his career and he hasn't asked to be traded.' But it was just the situation going forward that we felt like we couldn't run that risk.
Brian T. Smith
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