The Downbeat #708

This downbeat is dedicated to the future of the Utah Jazz, namely Derrick Favors. Why is he the future? Because he is the main piece of the Deron Williams trade. He's what we have to show from trading our present superstar. It might seem unfair to call Derrick the future, but the Jazz's floor and ceiling is directly related to Derrick's floor and ceiling. If he can be great, the Jazz will be great, no matter what happens with Hayward or Burks, or Kanter. The same is true, if he is very good, mediocre or poor. I would call Favors pretty good to very good right now.

Food for thought:

via espn.com/nba

It shouldn't take too long to figure out which starting big man is which, but hopefully you can see that Derrick Favors' offense isn't really very far behind Al Jefferson or Paul Millsap's. Especially encouraging is the field goal percentage and the free throw attempts per shot attempt. And we haven't even talked about the defense.

So how about Derrick Favors' defense? Well, defense is the hardest to quantify through statistical evidence, but there is no question that Derrick Favors gives us a big lift defensively. I'll just touch the tip of the iceberg with this fact:

The Jazz, on the season, have allowed teams to score 104 points per 100 possessions according to Hoopdata. In the 8 games that Derrick Favors has started, that number is 98.5. And that includes Derrick's first two starts, where the Jazz gave up 109 and 113.6 points respectively to the Lakers and the Nuggets.

So with all these facts, I believe there are only 3 appropriate courses of action.

1) Start Derrick Favors over Paul Millsap

2) Start Derrick Favors over Al Jefferson

3) Take some combination of 10 minutes from Jefferson and Millsap and give them to Favors. And let Favors finish games as well.

But where should Favors start?

For several reasons, I think it makes more sense to play Favors alongside Paul Millsap, but there are certainly strong arguments to be made for starting D15 with Al Jefferson. These numbers above are again skewed, by Favors first two starts, which were poor, but I think if you had a larger sample size, you would find similar patterns.

Also, I'm afraid that when Al returns, Coach Corbin will opt for option 4, which is to do things exactly how he was doing them.

Also Derrick Favors' free throw shooting is trending in the right direction. He's shooting 63% this season. Just to show that guys can improve, Karl Malone didn't shoot above 60% until his 3rd year in the league. Also there's this: