It’s been 11 years since the 2014 NBA draft, a night that was supposed to be a monumental shift for the Utah Jazz franchise. After finishing with a 25-57 record and firing head coach, Tyrone Corbin, the Jazz looked to strike gold with the fifth pick to add to their young core of Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors, and Enes Kanter (and a French big man who most fans didn’t know about yet).
Fast forward to today, where Utah finds itself in the same spot, picking fifth and 21st in the middle of a challenging rebuild.
Let’s take a look back at previous drafts and see who the Jazz took with that fifth pick in 2014, and also who they’ve taken with pick 21. Will they repeat history tonight?
2014 NBA Draft Media Availability and Portraits Photo by David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images
2014 Rd. 1 Pick 5: Dante Exum | PG | Melbourne, Australia
With the fifth pick that fateful night in 2014, the Utah Jazz selected Dante Exum, a 6-foot-6 point guard with great size and length.
Exum was the basketball hipsters’ darling that year. While the average fan didn’t know who he was in the months leading to the draft, diehards were clamoring over his highlight tape from the 2013 Nike Hoops Summit in Portland, OR, where he scored 16 points in a game that featured Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, Joel Embiid, Julius Randle and Aaron Gordon.
Exum infamously didn’t have a pre-draft workout with the Utah Jazz, but Dennis Lindsay selected the mystery that was the 18-year-old from Australia. The idea of a long and fast point guard who could not only facilitate, but had shooting upside, was just too much to pass up on.
Exum’s rookie stats are not great, but the team found success when he was put into the starting lineup in the second half of the season. The Jazz had a winning record post all-star break, and Exum (but mostly Gobert) was a big part of that.
That offseason, Exum tore his ACL playing with the Australian national team, thus starting his long, injury-riddled career with the Jazz that never saw him truly take off. In the 2018 playoffs, he had a big-time poster dunk on PJ Tucker to seal a game two victory against the No. 1 seed Houston Rockets to even the series. If I recall correctly, there were a few possessions where he played pretty decent defense against MVP James Harden, prompting Jazz fans to jokingly call him the “Harden stopper.”
In the middle of Exum’s sixth season in Utah, the Jazz traded him for future sixth man of the year, Jordan Clarkson, and that is the legacy of the Jazz’s only No. 5 draft pick in franchise history.
Every time the Utah Jazz selected No. 21
1989 Rd. 1 Pick 21: Blue Edwards | SG/SF | East Carolina
Blue Edwards played his first three seasons in Utah, starting every game in 1991-92 and averaging 12.6 points per game that season. He was then traded to Milwaukee for Larry Kristkowiak and Jay Humphries.
He wound up back on the Jazz in 1995, but was selected in the NBA’s expansion draft by the Vancouver Grizzlies. Edwards was a solid player on some contending Jazz teams, which for the 21st pick, you’ll take.
1991 Rd. 1 Pick 21: Eric Murdock | Point Guard | Providence
Eric Murdock had the misfortune of playing his rookie season behind John Stockton, so there was not much opportunity for him in Utah, only averaging nine minutes a game in 50 appearances. He was then traded in the same Blue Edwards deal to Milwaukee, where he spent 3 and a half successful seasons in and out of the starting lineup.
2018: Rd. 1 Pick 21: Grayson Allen | Guard | Duke
2018 NBA Draft Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images
One of the biggest college basketball villains, and one of the best athletes ever tested at the draft combine, the Jazz took Grayson Allen following Donovan Mitchell’s rookie season.
Allen didn’t see much playing time in his rookie year, but I always thought he provided a nice spark whenever he did play. He randomly had a 40-point performance in the last game of the regular season, where most starters did not play.
He was involved in the trade that brought Mike Conley to Utah, so ultimately his Jazz legacy will always be tied to teams that he was never even a part of.