Insider: Jazz Front Office Wrote Off Joel Embiid During 2014 Draft

An anonymous Jazz staffer spoke about Utah's scouting process for the soon-to-come league MVP.

The 2013-14 season was during a time before the year-in and year-out playoff appearances of the Utah Jazz teams appearing later in the decade. This season instead was filled with many losses on the schedule and resulting in some high stake in the draft lottery.

Eventually, the Jazz ended with an abysmal 25-57 record and the 5th overall pick in the draft. With such high implications moving forward due to the lack of success during the season, Utah would extremely benefit from a high-impact player here. Scouting the upcoming prospects in this draft was as important as ever for the front office.

Within the 2014 class had some significant hits: All-Stars Andrew Wiggins, Julius Randle, Zach LaVine, DPOY Marcus Smart, and even the two-time NBA MVP, Nikola Jokic later in the second round. The player at the topic at hand however is the most recent MVP of this season, Philadelphia 76ers' Joel Embiid.

Despite Embiid only lasting three total picks into the draft, it seems like he would've had no chance of going to the Jazz, or even any remote interest from the franchise at the time. According to a tweet from Andy Larsen of The Salt Lake Tribune, the team had some worries surrounding the medicals of the Kansas product.

After Joel Embiid missed much of his first two years due to injury, a Jazz front office staffer bragged to me about how the team had accurately red-flagged him during the draft process. How they wouldn’t have drafted him at #5 in 2014, even if he were available.

Welp.

— Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) May 2, 2023

Thankfully for Utah fans, Embiid was selected before the Jazz even had the opportunity. If somehow his medicals allowed him to slip down draft boards past five, it could've been an all-time miss on the Jazz's scouting department. 

With such cautiousness and confidence in their scouting process, you would assume the team took a high-level player over Embiid at their selection.

They took Dante Exum. The player who's most recently known for getting slammed in an overseas game hard enough to sustain a foot injury.

If the Jazz weren't going to be able to make the draft mistake to pass on Embiid, they were able to make another one by selecting Exum over some of the other names still available. Imagine a player like former DPOY guard, Marcus Smart, over the result that actually happened.

Hopefully this draft, the Jazz can have a higher level of success than in past year's. The 77th edition of the 2023 NBA Draft will be held on June 22nd, in Brooklyn, New York as always.

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