The Jazz fell to 0-4 tonight for the first time since they moved from New Orleans for the 1979/80 season, but there was a silver lining to the team’s loss to the Nets. Brandon Rush played his first game since tearing the ACL in his left knee a year ago. He re-emerged in Utah as one of three Warriors who came over in a trade that was more about draft picks for the Jazz than it was about current players. Rush might not be part of Utah’s future, but Derrick Favors is, and there’s more on him as Jazz fans already start to think about 2014/15:
- Favors had no intention of letting contract talks with the Jazz play out until next summer once the team approached him about an extension, and says to Tim Bontemps of the New York Post that he told agent Wallace Prather to, “Go ahead and get this done.”
- Favors was of two minds when the Jazz decided not to re-sign Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap, as Bontemps notes in the same piece. “I mean, it’s exciting for me,” Favors said. “I hate it that we had to let Al and Paul go, because those guys are great guys, great teammates, great people overall. But I guess it was a time for a chance, and I’m excited about it.”
- Signing Jimmer Fredette next summer would serve neither the Jazz’s nor the former BYU star’s best interest, argues Brad Rock of the Deseret News, who believes that if the Jazz want to have a Mormon on the roster, they should draft Jabari Parker.