The west is stacked and their talent is low or young. The gap to cover is wide.

I don’t like being in the top third of the worst either because the chances go down to get a star in the draft, but the problem is that Lauri M is too good to tank that much. So arguably you could trade Lauri for more assets and to actually tank, but that doesn’t make sense when he’s going into his prime and a really good player/borderline all star (unless he doesn’t want to be here). This said, one trade that might make sense to explore is Lauri to GS for Kaminga and picks if you can pull that off. That way you get a good young player, more assets, and can actually tank next year in a good draft.

If they keep and resign Lauri, they’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place and I think it’s likely they will try to use some assets to trade for a better player and still be a borderline playin team. They need some luck in the draft to move up for once, which never seems to fall their way.

All this said, I think where Ainge deserves some criticism is resigning Clarkson and trading for Collins. Neither one of those actually helped the Jazz improve and have bad contracts that might be hard to move, plus Hardy plays them significant minutes which takes minutes away from young player’s development. See Kessler, not that he doesn’t deserve some criticism for his offensive play either.