Utah Jazz: Derrick Favors Injury Woes Continue in Round 2 of Playoffs

The injury woes continue for the Utah Jazz, more specifically for Derrick Favors, as the big man finds himself listed as questionable for Game 1 against the Golden State Warriors.

This article was meant to be something entirely different. In fact, after the Utah Jazz’s thrilling Game 7 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers, I quickly jotted down the title of what this piece was supposed to be – “The Game 7 Version of Derrick Favors Has to Carry Over to the Series Against GSW”.

Who knows, perhaps that article may have very well ended up being the best I’d ever written and helped me to burst onto the national spotlight (yeah…I’m kidding), but unfortunately, while the opinion stated in that presumed headline is still most certainly true, it’s a story that no longer needs to be written. At least not yet.

Instead, the story is this – Derrick Favors is now listed as questionable for Tuesday’s Game 1 against the Golden State Warriors due to lower back soreness. Rather than receiving the Game 7 version of Derrick Favors, it looks like the Jazz may very well be receiving the regular season version of him, one who spent much of his time either on the bench or logging inefficient, unhealthy minutes.

This is an absolute shame to be sure. Favors was coming in off perhaps his best and certainly his most timely performance of the year as he posted 17 points on 8-of-11 shooting and 11 rebounds in 29 minutes of play.

Beyond that, not only have the Jazz as a team personally struggled with a seemingly unending bout of injuries all season long, but Derrick Favors individually has been constantly plagued. Knee issues hampered him throughout the year and it only just appeared that he was overcoming that ailment. Now he finds himself with the aforementioned lower back pain, an issue he has dealt with before.

Because of that pain, reports from earlier today indicated that Favors missed practice and his status for Tuesday’s game is very much up in the air. Despite his inconsistencies all season long including in Utah’s latest series against the Clippers, there’s no questioning that the Jazz are a better team when they can turn to him as the backup center behind Rudy Gobert rather than having to rely on an undersized and aging Boris Diaw or an often ineffective Jeff Withey.

The news about Favors could therefore end up being a huge blow for the Jazz who were already enormous underdogs in the impending series against the top-seeded Warriors to begin with.

This development is even sadder when put into context with Favors’ post-game comments following the Game 7 win over the Clippers. Here’s what he had to say about his incredible performance:

"“I was struggling a lot this season with injuries and my teammates had to hold it down for me while I was out. I felt like I owed them, especially in this game.”“It feels real good. I just wanted to pay them back for holding [it] down all season.”"

Derrick did indeed do a phenomenal job of paying back the team for all the time he had to miss by coming up big when it mattered most. Unfortunately, it now appears that the Jazz will have to “hold it down” once again in his likely Game 1 absence.

The lone bright side to all of this is that after this turbulent season the Jazz are more than used to players going down and are already familiar with having to rely on the “next man up.” Such will very much be the case once again if Favors is sidelined.

Unfortunately, one of Utah’s key weapons against Golden State was going to be the team’s size and length in the frontcourt and of course Derrick Favors was set to be a major part of that. Nevertheless, the Jazz will have no choice but to just adapt and hope to find other ways to challenge the Warriors in the event that Favors does indeed sit out the contest.

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Be sure to stay tuned to The J Notes for further updates on Derrick Favors’ status leading up to Tuesday’s much-anticipated Game 1 bout against the Golden State Warriors.