Utah Jazz: 3 takeaways from the 2018 offseason
By Mason McFee
3. The Jazz are betting on internal improvement
Derrick Favors is a career 20.2 percent shooter from 3. Dante Exum has played in 162 regular season contests out of a possible 246 and has only made 67 starts since being selected fifth overall in the 2014 NBA Draft. Next season, the pair will be the second- and sixth-highest paid players on the Jazz, respectively. Why?
For starters, the Jazz are not your typical NBA team. They employ two “traditional” bigs in their starting five, one of their players that totaled the sixth-most minutes during the postseason was undrafted, and their only 20 points per game scorer was a rookie.
So where do the returning guys fit in?
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Exum will not start unless one of Donovan Mitchell or Ricky Rubio succumbs to injury, but will figure to up his career minutes per game average of 20.2 next season. He only played in 14 games this past season, but his per 36 numbers from last season say that he would have averaged 17.5 points, 6.6 assists, and 1.2 steals. Those numbers would have ranked second, first and fourth on the team on a per game basis. He’s the backup.
According to NBAsavant.com, Favors shot a combined 24 percent from beyond the arc in the corners. Considering that’s where nearly 92 percent of his 3-point attempts came from last season, that’s where he’ll set up shop most possessions when a play is called for him. He may never be a league-average 3-point shooter, but even getting to 30 percent shooting from distance could take Utah’s offense to a whole new level.
Oh yeah and that Mitchell kid, the fourth-best 3-point shooter (Joe Ingles) and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year (Rudy Gobert) will all improve too.