Derrick Favors is having a career year

Derrick Favors is quietly having one of the best years of his career. His raw stats may not show this, but he has been a significant contributor to a great season for the Utah Jazz. Look what I mean.

I’ll be the first to admit some uncertainty about Derrick Favors being able to play with Rudy Gobert. But he has proved a lot of doubters wrong, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Whether he stays or goes in the offseason is one thing, but I am excited to watch him finish another solid season for the Jazz. Hopefully this one ends at least as well as the last one.

Derrick Favors isn’t the only one due for a comeback year. Dante Exum is back and it’s been great to see him on the court again. Dan Devine of Yahoo Sports! put together an article focused on the former No. 5 pick:

Exum’s return comes at an opportune time for the Jazz, who just lost reserve point guard Raul Neto to a fractured left wrist that should keep him sidelined for a couple of weeks. All of a sudden, Utah’s got a dozen or so backcourt minutes per game clear to give Exum a chance to work the rust off, get his conditioning up, and hopefully showcase the two-way talents that had many excited for the prospect of him getting a larger role in Utah’s rotation following the losses of Gordon Hayward and George Hill this summer...

Jazz coach Quin Snyder was careful to pump the brakes on expectations for a player who hasn’t seen live NBA game action in 10 months, according to Eric Woodyard of the Deseret News:

“I would caution us not to all of a sudden with Dante coming back to expect too much from a guy that hasn’t had a chance to play in a while,” said Jazz coach Quin Snyder. “I would dissuade us from thinking he’s going to do what Raul did, they’re two different players.

“Dante has been a guard for us, he’s played the point, he’s played on the wing, he’s got size and we just want to see Dante get more and more healthy and more and more confident and see where it goes,” he added.

Fan Posts!!!

Keliko is looking to share season tickets for next year:

Looking to share season tickets for next season.

UpperBowl. If you already have them and are interested in splitting some games up, great. If not I’m looking at either the Turquoise, Gold, Green packages.

Need 2 seats per game.

A draft type system for the games would be preferable.

Thanks for looking.

Logical Dodo says we are slacking on our Rubio gif game:

Okay, yes, I get it. We can’t all be the J.Crowds, Jingles and Donovans of the world.

But you, YES, YOU!, Jazz fan, can jump to Rubio’s defense ALMOST LIKE YOU YOURSELF ARE ON THE COURT!

You do this by posting as many Rubio gifs as you can to react to these situations. There is a Rubio gif for all situations (and even more have probably appeared on the interwebs with your darling point-guard in your teams uniform).

Sauceman64 helped bring attention to the Utah Jazz signing David Stockton:

The Utah Jazz may likely sign David Stockton, John Stockton’s son, to a 10 day contract. Now that NBA teams are trying to injure Rubio (who is potentially injured with a knee contusion and is questionable for Saturday night’s game with the Kings), and with Neto injured, the Jazz signed Stockton.

Gobert_the_Destroyer continues the good work of summing up games around the league on a daily and weekly basis.

What a week! So much happened in the NBA that it’s hard to believe.

Our Utah Jazz, heroes of the hardwood, finally started moving from the 10th spot after being stuck there for roughly 10,000 years.

Kurt Helin put out some polls on twitter and it appears that Jazz fans came out in full force. OR people around the country are actually believing that *gasp* Utah Jazz players are deserving of NBA awards. One of which is Rudy Gobert for Defensive Player of the Year.

The race for Defensive Player of the Year is wide open, which is what I get into in this latest PBT Extra video. Joel Embiid has been the favorite most of the season, but the flat-out best defender this season has been Rudy Gobert — when he is on the court the Jazz allow just 97.2 points per 100 possessions. Problem is he missed considerable time with a pair of knee injuries.

So who is the Defensive Player of the Year leading into the final month of the NBA season? I asked you readers on Twitter, and the answer was Gobert with Rudy Gobert at 61 percent, followed by Joel Embiid with 21 percent and Green back with 10 percent.

I give you Exhibit A:

And Exhibit B:

Last year the Utah Jazz finally got to see some of their patience and hard work pay off after a few long years of rebuilding. This culminated in 51 wins and a first round series win. (And the blowing up of the LA Clippers). Then George Hill wanted too much money and Gordon Hayward thought the jerseys were greener on the other side.

This year the Jazz were projected to have a pretty significant setback due to those losses. Instead, the Jazz have won 21 of 23 games and are on pace for around 48 wins and potentially an even better playoff seed than last year.

Interestingly enough, according FiveThirtyEight’s Carm Elo ratings, last year’s peak was after the Game 7 victory against the Clippers and put them at 1633. This year’s highest is at 1651 and still climbing since they are in the middle of another extended winning streak.

This got me thinking...