News broke early Monday afternoon that the Utah Jazz would not be bringing back head coach Ty Corbin.

Although the news wasn’t unexpected, I was still a little shocked at how the Jazz handled this situation.  In my mind, the Utah Jazz front office made a mistake; and not that they decided against renewing Corbin’s contract.  The mistake they made was not handling this decision last summer.

Back then, the Jazz had two options that made real sense.  The first of those was to let Corbin go at and bring in and interim coach for the 2013-14 season.  That way they could’ve had a trial period to let an up-and-coming coach earn a long-term deal while controlling exactly who played, for the teams’ desired intentions.

If that was done then the Jazz wouldn’t have wasted valuable minutes on players like Richard Jefferson and even Marvin Williams.  Those minutes could’ve been used for more growth opportunities for the likes of Enes Kanter, Rudy Gobert, Jeremy Evans and even Brandon Rush.   That way the Jazz would’ve probably won fewer games and had a better chance in the draft lottery while developing a few more young players.  After all, Kanter let us know that was what he expected out of this season in an interview after the season was done.  He mentioned he thought he would get more minutes on the floor and more minutes to play with the other young Jazz hopefuls.

Obviously that wasn’t the decision that the front office made.  (Nor did I ever expect the Jazz to make that move since they would never want to pay two coaches for the same season.  Let’s face it, they don’t do things like the Lakers).

The other option that made the most sense would have been to extend Corbin’s contract last summer.  In that process they could have made it abundantly clear who needed to play and that wins didn’t matter for the Jazz this season to build a winner in the future.  Richard Jefferson could’ve had the same role as he did with Golden State last year ( a great seat on the bench), and then waived at the end of the year while Brandon Rush got those minutes to prove if he could be a future asset.  Marvin Williams didn’t need any time either.  He could’ve been moved at the deadline for another draft pick in the upcoming draft.

That way Corbin could have been helping to build a winner and not coaching for his job.

Since they did neither, the least the jazz brass could’ve done is give Corbin some ammunition to fight with.  Randy Foye and Mo Williams could’ve been had on the cheap and would’ve been a much better option than John Lucas III.  Instead they left him to fight a war with two baseball bats and a butter knife.  In other words, not exactly the kind of talent that he needed to be successful as a coach this season and battle to keep his job.