Utah Jazz brass willing to pay luxury tax if necessary

A glint of light on the Jazz's offseason plans — including their willingness to pay the NBA's luxury tax after next season, if they must — was shed during a pair of weekend television interviews with family ownership head Greg Miller.

The Jazz, Miller said in a reiteration of comments made previously from within the organization, will do whatever it takes to retain restricted free agent Paul Millsap — even if their player payroll was pushed beyond $71 million and into tax territory because starting power forward Carlos Boozer, starting center Mehmet Okur and backup shooting guard Kyle Korver all were to decide against becoming free agents this offseason.

"If we need to," Miller told KSL-TV Ch. 5's Tom Kirkland, "we would not rule out paying luxury-tax money in order to keep him on the team.

"I just love what I see in him. I love his aggression; I love his hustle. He always just seems to be in the right place in the right time."

The league's luxury-tax threshold — yet to be set for next season — is a payroll marker which, when exceeded, means teams must pay a dollar-for-dollar tax for every dollar that they go over.

They also lose their right to share in team-by-team distribution of the tax proceeds.

"We're trying to look at things in a best-case and a worst-case scenario and make sure that we're able to handle things on both ends. And we feel that we will," Miller — CEO of the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies, parent company of the Jazz — told KSL-TV Ch. 5 in an interview aired late Sunday night.

"When I say, 'worst case,' that means if we had to spend all the money, and all the players with their options decided to come back. That would obviously put us in a luxury tax situation, and we feel that if that were the case we would be willing to go into the luxury tax realm to preserve and protect the team and put the most competitive team that we can on the floor."

The declaration is something of a departure from the Jazz's previous stance on the tax.

The team's late owner, Larry H. Miller, used to say the franchise would never be a taxpayer, then later modified that to say, essentially, that the Jazz would consider paying if they were on the brink of winning an NBA championship and doing so might push them over the top.

The latest comments by Greg Miller, who previously would not commit to paying the tax, seem to echo his late father's sentiments.