Trading Walker Kessler has already stirred up plenty around the Utah Jazz, but one of the smartest parts of the deal had nothing to do with the center itself. Utah also managed to avoid taking Jarred Vanderbilt back from the Los Angeles Lakers, and that detail matters.
The Lakers were clearly eager to land Kessler, and Utah took full advantage of that urgency. They came away with almost all of LA’s draft capital, but the real quiet win was refusing to inherit Vanderbilt’s contract. Sam Quinn highlighted that on " The Third Apron," calling it a "massive failure" that the Lakers couldn’t even get Utah to take Vanderbilt back.
That says plenty about where things stood with LA. Vanderbilt has been stuck in JJ Redick's doghouse for a while, and the problem is obvious: he’s making eight figures both this year and the next. So while the Lakers got help with their biggest issue, they also created another one for themselves, and now they’re trying to move off Vanderbilt as well.
The Jazz, though, didn’t just dodge a bad contract in this deal. They were the team that originally sent Vanderbilt to Los Angeles three years ago, along with Malik Beasley, in the trade that technically made Russell Westbrook a Jazzman. Vanderbilt had some early promise with the Lakers, but once he signed on for that big raise, the shine came off fast.
From Utah’s perspective, the whole sequence looks pretty sharp in hindsight. They avoided having Vanderbilt sit on their cap sheet and handed that headache to the Lakers instead.
And there’s another layer here too: the pick LA sent in that deal was later used in the trade to acquire Jaren Jackson Jr. That’s about as clean a bonus as a front office can ask for.
There doesn’t appear to be any indication that Utah seriously considered taking Vanderbilt back, or that the Lakers even floated him in negotiations. Given how little value he has right now, if his name did come up, the Jazz likely would have shut it down immediately.
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