Friday, March 4, 2011

Jazz Ship Williams To Nets; Favors Joins A Crowd

The Utah Jazz saw what happened to the Toronto Raptors and Cleveland Cavaliers and they wanted to no part of it. In other words, they weren’t go to watch their superstar walk for nothing, which is what it appeared would happened after rumors surfaced this week.

In return for Williams, the Jazz received Devin Harris, Derrick Favors and two first-round picks.

It’s an interesting deal for the Jazz – especially the part that includes Favors. Those who follow basketball spread betting know that Favors was the third overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft and he was expected to be one of the Nets foundational pieces of the future. The Nets did have a gaping vacancy at power forward.

Looking to his future team, though, the Jazz simply don’t have the same type of need for the position.

Utah currently has Al Jefferson locked up for $13 M, $14 M and $15 M over the next three years and they will also be paying Paul Millsap an additional $20.1 M in that span as well. In total that’s $62.1 M that the Jazz are committing to two other power forwards who are on the roster.

So where does that leave Favors?

The short answer is that he’s now in a very crowded frontcourt. Throw in the fact that the Jazz will be paying center Mehmet Okur another $10 M (roughly) over the next two seasons and this trade is starting to make less and less sense for Utah.

We’ll have to wait and see whether the Jazz make another move to get rid of some of this logjam but for now, there’s a lot of money and resources committed to the power forward position on their team.

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