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As the rest of the NBA world appeared bowled over by Wednesday morning's blockbuster trade, Dennis Lindsey appeared calm when asked about the news.
It's a move that's bound to shake up the NBA: The Los Angeles Clippers traded Chris Paul to the Houston Rockets for a handful of players and a future draft pick, pairing the nine-time All-Star with James Harden and perhaps setting up yet another "super team" in the Western Conference.
But Lindsey said Wednesday, as the Jazz introduced their draft picks, mega-trades and deals don't necessarily shake up what the Jazz will do. While many teams may feel under the gun to make a move to try to stack up with the Golden State Warriors and other franchises, the Jazz want to stay true to their "fundamental" game plan.
"Look, all executives, head coaches, ownership — they know the right thing to do, and then many times what happens is you capitulate to pressure and you overreach," he said. "We want to stick to our fundamentals of team-building, mindset, culture, skills, fits, value adds, contract production. We feel like if we continually do that, we're going to be in good stead."
Utah's big offseason goal, Lindsey said, remains trying to re-sign the team's incumbent free agents Gordon Hayward and George Hill. In the view of overall team chemistry, the Jazz liked the team they had last year and want to try their best to keep core pieces together.
That doesn't mean that Lindsey never feels pressure to make a move: This year at the trade deadline, he said, he felt his trigger finger getting itchy.
"The pressure to do something because someone else does something, I get it," he said. "We had a lot of that frankly at trade deadline. We had room, we had extra picks, so we studied it, like everybody else, about the normal impact of trade deadline acquisitions. For us it was more important to keep our powder dry, to keep our picks, our extra picks because we did like this draft, as you guys saw."
Lindsey said he believes that Utah, which tends to build through the draft rather than get splashy free-agent signings, needs to do above-average scouting and evaluation on players to gain a competitive edge. That means building a team will often supercede the importance of trying to make headline-grabbing deals, at least for the Jazz.
The Paul trade might be most relevant to the Jazz in how it affects Utah's quest to re-sign Hayward and Hill, with whom they are expected to meet soon after free agency begins on July 1. If Paul is on a Western contender, does that increase demand for Hill as a point guard who could help counter him, for example?
Without addressing any league-wide deals specifically, Lindsey said the Jazz remain "quite confident" they can bring back their free agents.
"We'll see if that confidence is well-placed," he said.
kgoon@sltrib.com Twitter: @kylegoon