Danny Ainge, CEO of basketball operations of the NBA's Utah Jazz, on Monday explained his decision to trade the team's star duo Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell during the offseason.

"What I saw during the season was a group of players that really didn't believe in each other," Ainge said. "Like the whole group, I think they liked each other even more than what was reported, but I'm not sure there was a belief."

When Ainge took over his position in the Jazz last December, the team was 19-7. Their final record in the regular season was 49-33, and they ranked fifth in the Western Conference. Then in the first-round playoffs, the Jazz lost to the Dallas Mavericks 4-2. Though Mavericks ace Luka Doncic missed the first three games of the series due to injury, the Jazz only won one of them.

"When we got to the playoffs, I thought, well, this is a team that has had some disappointing playoffs, so I thought maybe they're just waiting for the playoffs. I gave them that benefit of the doubt, but it was clear the team didn't perform well in the playoffs again," Ainge said.

The Jazz haven't missed the postseason even once since 2017. They were 52-20 and leading the West in the 2020-2021 regular season but got stopped in the Western semifinals after blowing a 2-0 lead against the Los Angeles Clippers.

"Like I believe every one of these guys went into every game believing they were going to win; don't get me wrong on that," Ainge told reporters. "I'm just saying when adversity hit, the resolve, you could see in a team that has a true belief in having each other's back or one another."

"I think, individually, they have resolve. But I just don't believe collectively they did. So you see a lot of players trying to do it on their own, as the belief in one another wasn't as great as teams I've been on and around that I've seen," he added.

The Jazz received eight players, seven future first-round draft picks and three swaps by trading Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves and Mitchell to the Cleveland Cavaliers. They are also reportedly interested in sending away Mike Conley, Jordan Clarkson and Bojan Bogdanovic for more future assets.

"The biggest thing for us was opening up a window to compete for a title," Jazz general manager Justin Zanik said. "Give credit to ownership, the organization, the community and the support we've had over the last three years as we put every resource toward trying to accomplish that. And we fell short."

"In the NBA life cycle, this was kind of a touch point to make a pivot. To do that, we wanted to give the organization every opportunity, the greatest base of flexibility, young players and assets going forward to make really good decisions going forward to reach the ceiling we want to get to, and that's win a title here," he added.

The Jazz tried to change before they came to this point. They were one of the league's top three defensive teams in the 2016-2017 and 2018-2019 campaigns but struggled with their offense. Then the team tried to pivot by adding more three-point shooters to their squad. They became a top offensive franchise in the league in the past two seasons, but that improvement didn't take the Jazz much further in the playoffs.

"You have these conversations, and there's a return, and you start balancing what you can acquire on the market for perennial All-Star players, and we traded two of them this summer, that necessitates us to make a decision for the organization that is hard," Zanik said. "We've got really good players, but you have a timeline you want to open up with a maximum window."

"Previous results kind of told us who we were. It wasn't just a one-year thing. This was a good three-year period where we won a lot of games and had a lot of success, but we were tapped out from a potential standpoint, and we needed to reset that," he added.

Colin Sexton, Lauri Markkanen, Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley, Walker Kessler and Ochai Agbaji, who the Jazz acquired via the trades of Gobert and Michell, are all promising youngsters but not good enough to take the team to the playoffs again on their current performance. The Jazz are rarely an attractive destination to star free agents judging by history, despite that they can clear tremendous salary space in the coming years. By contrast, the first-rounders they hoard can be more helpful to their rebuild.