Utah Jazz: Derrick Favors resumes role as king of cryptic tweets

Much like he did at the trade deadline, Derrick Favors has once again posted some rather cryptic tweets, creating rising speculation among Utah Jazz fans.

Even though there won’t be another meaningful NBA game played until late October, there’s still plenty to be excited about in the basketball world. The NBA Draft is less than a week away, the first-ever NBA Awards Show is shortly after that (though in my opinion, the awards lose some of their luster being presented this long after the season’s end), then free agency starts on July 1.

Amidst and leading up to all of those events, we get to enjoy the ever-churning rumor mill, crazy trade ideas and never-ending hypothetical situations. And fans and the media produce enough of that all on their own, but when players do something – intentional or not – to ramp up the speculation, that’s when the chaos really ensues.

The recent Instagram photo that was posted by Gordon Hayward’s wife Robyn is a perfect example of that. An otherwise normal picture was blown enormously out of proportion because their daughter was wearing a shirt with a clover on it, which led many to believe it was a subliminal endorsement of the Boston Celtics.

That line of thinking was certainly a stretch, but that’s the kind of wishful or negative thinking (depending which side you’re on) that this time of year instills in NBA fans.

Although it hasn’t caused nearly the stir that Robyn’s picture did, Derrick Favors’ recent Twitter activity – again, whether intentional or not – has riled up a few of the Jazz faithful as well. Over the past few days, below are the two extremely vague tweets that the Jazz big man has posted:

Now Favors doesn’t tweet all that often, so when something like this comes up, it’s bound to attract some eyeballs. Of course, these players have lives outside of basketball and the things they post on social media could very well have nothing to do with the sport. However, since that’s all we know them for, especially around this time of year and particularly from a player who doesn’t post all that many updates, we tend to jump to conclusions.

Thus, naturally, a handful of fans began to speculate that perhaps Favors’ “blessing in disguise” and “adversity” had something to do with him being traded from the Jazz. His name certainly has come up a number of times as a potential trade piece this offseason and there’s no debating that the Jazz may look to make a big splash prior to the start of free agency to tip the scale of the Hayward decision in their favor.

What’s even more interesting about these cryptic tweets, though, is that this isn’t the first time that Favors has put fans through the ringer like this. Back just before the trade deadline (another insane time when speculation is flying high), Favors tweeted out a simple “chin-stroking confused guy emoji”, as I put it. Nothing more, nothing less. Not long afterwards, his fiancee got in on the fun as well, throwing further fuel onto the fire.

This obviously had fans going nuts. To our knowledge, nothing basketball-related ended up happening that had to do with the tweets, but we’ll likely never know the truth for sure. Of course, Derrick Favors downplayed the tweet, insinuating that it had no significance whatsoever, but still one has to wonder.

Even if the latest tweets mean nothing and no trade or change is forthcoming, Favors sure picks ironic times to send out vague tweets, leaving no doubt as to why fans draw conclusions from them. Doing it first around the trade deadline and now with free agency and the draft on the doorstep clearly make Favors the king of cryptic tweets – an expert in the craft of sending his fans for a loop and causing them to dramatically overthink things.

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Only time will tell if the latest edition of unclear Favors tweets will lead to anything, and quite frankly, as the Jazz look to keep Gordon Hayward, Joe Ingles and possibly George Hill while making some improvements to better the team as a whole, moving Favors who has struggled with injuries the past couple seasons could very well end up being in the cards.

And if that does end up happening, at least we can say that he gave us all fair warning…well…sort of…