Utah Jazz: Jae Crowder’s newfound starter status needs to be permanent

With Jae Crowder starting in place of Derrick Favors, the Utah Jazz offense exploded in Sunday’s win over the Sacramento Kings.

In every facet of life, it takes some measure of courage to enact change. Even when a particular course of action is clear and just, actually putting it into practice can be an agonizing prospect; blowback is a mother. On Sunday, Utah Jazz coach Quin Snyder was courageous.

Ahead of his team’s bout with the Sacramento Kings, Snyder made a pretty substantial change to the starting lineup. Derrick Favors, an entrenched veteran who has started in 340 games for Utah since the 2013-14 season, was relegated to the second unit.

Jae Crowder took his place in the first five and the results were, well…kind of amazing. The Jazz outscored the Kings by 13 points in Crowder’s 26 minutes on the floor. And Favors came up aces in the plus/minus department, too — the Jazz were plus-10 in his 24 minutes.

By night’s end, the Jazz had scored a whopping 133 points and won running away against a club that had cleaned their locks just one week earlier.

The path to take from here is obvious. Crowder should continue to set the tone early along with Ricky Rubio, Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles and Rudy Gobert, while Favors acts as the maven of mop-up. In other words, Crowder’s transition to starter status should be made permanent.

If you’ve been following the Jazz with any level of discernment, it’s a conclusion that you likely reached sometime ago.

Statistically, there’s not even an argument to be made against it.

Last season, even as he scuffled through the most difficult year of his life, basketball or otherwise, the Jazz were a juggernaut when Crowder joined the team’s primetime players. Of five-man lineup combinations that shared the court for 190 or more minutes, there wasn’t a unit league-wide better than Rubio-Mitchell-Crowder-Ingles-Gobert.

That crew led the Association with a net rating of 29.9.

And this year, despite Crowder’s continued shooting struggles and the Jazz being a net negative as a team through 20 games, that same lineup is outscoring the opposition by nearly 12 points per 100 possessions when they’re on. That’s not even counting Sunday’s blowout, which Mitchell missed with an injury.

In a league that’s all about space and pace, Crowder ups the ante exponentially in both departments next to Gobert. And while Favors is one of the game’s better defensive bigs, Crowder changes the team in a similar fashion on that end of the floor as well. His ability to guard out to the 3-point line and defend no less than three positions on the floor, gives Snyder and his crew a vastly more versatile, switchable D.

Let’s not discount what the flip-flop could mean for Favors, either.

He’s currently enjoying one of his best seasons from an efficiency standpoint. His effective field goal percentage currently sits at 60, a three-point improvement over last season and eight notches better than his career mark. And per 36 minutes, he’s putting up 17 points, 11 boards and 2.2 blocks — his best overall line in four years.

I’d ask you to imagine what he’ll be able to do against a higher preponderance of bench players, but you actually don’t have to. We saw it against the Kings when he put up 11 points, seven rebounds, three steals and three blocked shots in a dominating effort.

All that said, the decision to move him to the bench didn’t come lightly for Snyder, and why would it? After all, Favors is a player who has been with the Jazz (and mostly underpaid) for nearly a decade, was once considered a foundational piece for the franchise and has already sacrificed time and touches in service of Gobert’s ascension.

I know I wouldn’t want to be the guy to have to ask a person in that situation to give even more for the greater good. But I’m certainly glad the Jazz coach did so. And, to his credit, Favors took the move in stride.

Now, if the Jazz are to reach their true potential this season, player and coach need to continue to be courageous.