Utah Jazz use Free Agency to catapult team to Championship Contention

I wasn’t even two years old when the Utah Jazz lost in the NBA Finals to the Chicago Bulls for the second consecutive season. Since then, the Jazz have had their ups and downs. There were the Andrei Kirilenko years. Then the D-Will and Carlos Boozer era where the Jazz made it as far as the Western Conference Finals. Then, after Boozer left, Jerry Sloan retired and Williams was traded, Jazz fans faced the dark days of the Ty Corbin era when Randy Foye and Al Jefferson were arguably the Jazz biggest stars. The patience was rewarded, however, as the Jazz were blessed with Gordan Hayward and Rudy Gobert, and then when Hayward bolted for Boston, the Jazz found their best player since Karl Malone and John Stockton in Donovan Mitchell.

Through the ups and downs, Jazz fans have been there. The Jazz have been bad, even historically bad. They’ve also been good, but they’ve never been real championship contenders. That is, until now.

We’re less than 24 hours into NBA Free Agency and the Jazz have already had their best offseason in franchise history.

It started with the addition of point guard Mike Conley in a trade with the Memphis Grizzlies. Conley, while never being named to an NBA All-Star team, has been one of the premier point guards in the NBA over the past several seasons. The acquisition of Conley alone was enough to catapult the Jazz into contention. But while they were going to be very competitive, they still needed another piece. A piece that the Jazz had been looking for for years, and a piece that they finally found on Sunday night.

The Jazz signed two free agents on Sunday night, both of which should help the Jazz make a run at an NBA Championship this season.

The first is big man Ed Davis, who the Jazz agreed with on a 2 year/$10 million deal. Davis will serve as a backup center to two-time defensive player of the year, Rudy Gobert, due to his inability to stretch the floor, making it very unlikely that both Gobert and Davis will be able to share the floor. In fact, Davis has never made an NBA three-pointer. Instead, Davis will provide a punch off the bench for the Jazz. While he is no Rudy Gobert, Davis does possess a very similar NBA skill set. Davis is a career 57% shooter from the field who averaged 8.6 rebounds per game in just 18 minutes in 2018-19. But where the Jazz will really need, and love, Davis is on the defensive end of the ball.

The Jazz are a team that prides themselves on defense. And it’s been that way since the Jerry Sloan days. So who better to come off the bench in replacement of Gobert than the player who had the second-best defensive real plus-minus rating of any big man, behind only Gobert, Ed Davis. With Epke Udoh likely headed back to Europe, and Tony Bradley still developing, the Jazz needed a backup center and Davis should fill that role perfectly.

But Davis wasn’t the only player to join the Jazz in the past several hours. Davis was just the cherry on the top, Mike Conley was the cake itself which means the icing is the addition of Bojan Bogdanovic. The Jazz have been linked to forward Nikola Mirotic for quite some time. The Jazz loved his ability to stretch the floor with his outside shooting. So when Mirotic headed overseas, the Jazz had to look elsewhere for someone to fill that need.

As it turns out, Utah’s second option turned out to be a much better one. Mirotic is a nice player, but Bogdanovic is arguably the much better player. In fact, Bogdanovic leads Mirotic in nearly every statistical category, including FG%, 3P%, assists and PPG. Bogdanovic should be the perfect fit alongside Gobert at the four position thanks to his ability to spread the floor with his shooting ability. Bogdanovic shoots a 5% higher from deep than former Jazz-man Jae Crowder, who when paired with Gobert was one of the best lineups in the NBA last season. Bogdanovic also shoots 18% better than Derrick Favors, who started the majority of games alongside Gobert over the past few seasons. If the Jazz were able to win 50+ games in two of the past three seasons with Crowder and Favors playing alongside Gobert, just think of what Utah can accomplish with a player coming off a season in which they shot 42.5% from three playing alongside their superstar center.

Bogdanovic is even capable of carrying an offense at times, evident by his stats following the injury to Pacers’ star Victor Oladipo last season. In the 34 games without Oladipo, Bogdanovic averaged 20 PPG on 50% shooting from the floor and 41% from three.

Unfortunately, with every addition in the NBA world must come a subtraction. Jazz fans had a hunch it was coming but that didn’t lessen the sting of losing the longest tenured Jazz player on the roster, Derrick Favors.

Favors was a fan favorite among Jazz fans since he first arrived in Utah in the Deron Williams trade between New Jersey and the Jazz. Favors came to Utah as a 19-year-old kid who was in his rookie season on the world’s biggest basketball stage. Despite coming into the league as a teen, Favors has always been a true professional. Favors had every reason to be unhappy in Utah, after he was tasked with rebuilding a team after the departure of their two best players and the retirement of their Hall of Fame head coach. Favors endured the Ty Corbin days when Utah has never been more irrelevant in the NBA. And once the Jazz got good? Favors was at the center of trade talk at every trade deadline. Still, Favors never lost his professionalism. He went to work and did his job, regardless of what his job was that day. Favors is certainly a starting caliber player in the NBA and yet some days he was asked to come off the bench. Other days he was tasked with finishing the game when Gobert was unable to do so. No matter what his role was, Favors did it the best that he could. While he was not the perfect fit on-court alongside Gobert, Favors was the perfect fit within the Jazz culture and because of that, I wish him nothing but the best moving forward. I’m certain Jazz fans will show Favors just how much they will miss him when he and the New Orleans Pelicans visit Salt Lake this season.