When a team does what the Jazz have done over the past four years, there’s a negative consequence, a curse beyond just losing games.

Before we get to it, on account of it, an exorcism is necessary. In the name of Linda Blair, we’ll try to avoid any growling demonic voices, any projectile vomiting.

Let’s step into it slowly.

Everyone knows what’s gone on around here. After trading away All-Stars for financial flexibility and draft picks, along with a Lauri Markkanen here and a Walker Kessler there, the Jazz went ahead and selected a bunch of young players, and used the cover of player development to excuse … err, explain … records that devolved from 49-33 to 37-45 to 31-51 to 17-65 to 22-60. Hard to remember that the season before that first one, the Jazz sported the NBA’s best record. Ancient history.

The only thing the team got better at from that point was losing.

Oh, there was one other thing in recent years: accepting losing as a means to an end. The devil was in the details and the defeats.

That’s the way it is, or has been, for a mid-market team in a league that naturally favors big-market, destination-type outfits, places where top free agents have a harder time promoting themselves and heading their business interests. Big-market teams often can erase their draft mistakes by poaching players. Mid-market teams usually cannot.

A long time back, I asked a prominent agent whether Utah could keep up with some of those favored franchises. He said two things, one that was bang on, another that was mostly incorrect. He said the Jazz could, in fact, compete near or at the top of the NBA if their decision-makers’ acumen exceeded that of other league executives. In subsequent years, with a little luck, Oklahoma City substantiated that. And he also said the Jazz’s money was just as green as the cash offered by others.

Since that conversation, the Jazz’s NBA Finals teams went on to bend the knee, as everybody eventually does, to Father Time, the Jazz fell away, they built back up again to make the Western Conference finals, they fell away again, they built back up with the aforementioned All-Stars and thrived over stretches, but couldn’t quite satisfy expectations in the playoffs. Disruption reared up in the locker room, and that team was sold off like trinkets at the county fair, giving a nod to …

Losing. Extended losing.

It was such an un-Jazz-like thing to do.

Over the past four seasons, the Jazz lost more games — 221 — than they had since their first four seasons in Utah, from 1979 to 1983, when they lost, oddly enough, exactly 221.

In the 39 years between those two collapses, the Jazz had 31 winning seasons and just eight losers. They missed the playoffs a mere eight times.

They must have been smarter than a whole lot of other team executives because it’s not like they ever consistently signed star free agents on account of their money being every bit as green as anyone else’s. A couple of fellas named Stockton and Malone had something to do with the consistent success, but there were others, subsequent draftees, who sustained the winning.

It’s just that Larry O’Brien’s trophy was never hoisted in Salt Lake City, at least not by the Jazz. Michael Jordan, whether he pushed off or not, did a little hoisting.

If properly changing that last bit really was the main reason Danny Ainge, Justin Zanik and Ryan Smith tore apart a winner that couldn’t quite win it all, enduring four of the worst seasons in Utah Jazz history to set the foundation for legitimate runs at a title, en route pulling back on the reins on what they actually did have to ultimately make things not just better, but potentially the world’s best, that makes the decision Austin Ainge and the rest of Jazz leadership are about to make all the more significant.

Excuse that 93-word sentence. But it is one of the more important run-on sentences concerning the Jazz since the club arrived in Salt Lake City all those years ago.

Those guys’ acumen must blow past everyone else’s right now, in this draft. They have to get the right player to bump or at least begin to bump a losing team back to the supposed original goal.

Some say the top options in this draft are all No. 1-type picks, suggesting the specifics don’t really matter. AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cam Boozer, Caleb Wilson — and maybe others, too — are all potential franchise-altering additions. Throw a hat over ‘em.

Perhaps. But for the Jazz, it runs deeper than just that. They need a young leader, a competitive killer. Not that players like Markkanen and Jaren Jackson and Keyonte George aren’t talented and motivated. They are, despite the dregs through which they’ve waded. It’s not a direct comparison, but the way-back Lakers, when they already had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, needed a young buck, a dude name Magic, to come in and light the place on fire, which he did.

I know, I know, expecting any of these incoming rookies to have that exact effect, to be Magic Johnson, is unfair. But life, particularly life in the NBA, is unfair. Somebody at or near the top of this draft will completely change a franchise. It’s on the Jazz to get the one that will change theirs, and keep changing it.

Their money might be green, but this now is a matter of perception and smarts. If they get the right guy, the Jazz, in time, very well could contend for an NBA championship.

The consequence and curse mentioned at the top, suffered by the Jazz and their fans that goes beyond just losing games?

It’s belief, losing belief.

That’s what the Jazz can stir again with the correct pick. Devil and doubt be gone. It’s up to them to make it.