Jazz mailbag: What is the missing piece to make the Jazz an elite team?

Tony Jones, one of the Tribune’s Utah Jazz beat reporters, will answer questions submitted on Twitter each week in his Jazz mailbag. Here are this week’s questions and answers.

The first answer is the Jazz have to identify what Donovan Mitchell is going forward. Is he going to be Utah’s wing of the future? Or will he be the point guard of the future? That will affect what the Jazz do moving ahead. I think they need another dynamic wing to pair with Mitchell and Rudy Gobert. I think someone who can score, defend, shoot the ball and also has positional versatility is what’s needed. There are guys like that in the upcoming draft, like Luka Doncic, the 6-foot-8 international forward. But he will be out of Utah’s reach. There was one guy who was in Utah’s reach as recently as this summer: Mikal Bridges from Villanova. But he’s become one of the best players in the draft and probably will be off the board somewhere in the top 10. Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey has been creative in the draft before, however. That’s how the Jazz have Gobert and Mitchell right now.

I understand Jazz fans may have anxiety because of Gordon Hayward, but Donovan Mitchell’s situation really couldn’t be any different. For one, the Jazz have team control over Mitchell for at least the next seven years. That’s four years on an initial rookie contract and at least another three years on a second contract. So any question about Mitchell becoming an unrestricted free agent isn’t relevant until the next decade. And who knows what we’ll all be doing by then. Second, Mitchell doesn’t have an ex-college coach in the NBA. Third, the Jazz did everything right in Hayward’s situation. They drafted and developed a second star in Rudy Gobert. They surrounded Hayward with guys in free agency. Hayward simply decided he no longer wanted to play for the Jazz. Sometimes a franchise can do everything in its control to keep a player and it still doesn’t go well. It happened to Oklahoma City with Kevin Durant. It happened to the Jazz with Hayward.

If I was Quin Snyder, I’d have the same starting lineup that the real Quin Snyder uses. He doesn’t really have a bunch of options. Donovan Mitchell has emerged as his best perimeter offensive player, so his inclusion into the lineup was a no-brainer, especially given Rodney Hood’s recent injury. Joe Ingles is the best shooter and pure passer on the team as well as the best perimeter defender. Rudy Gobert is a given. The two questions are Derrick Favors and Ricky Rubio. Favors no question is one of the best five players on the team. He deserves to be in the starting lineup. More importantly, if you take him out of the starting lineup, you are designating him as a center and limiting him to 15 minutes a game because Gobert is going to be on the floor 35 minutes a game. You can get Favors 25 minutes game by starting him at power forward. It’s not ideal because he won’t be closing most games, but at least he’ll play a deserved complement of minutes. And you won’t lose him in the locker room, which is important as well. As for finishing games, the Jazz need to get healthy. But if they were, it probably would go something like this: Mitchell, Hood, Ingles, Joe Johnson and Gobert. That lineup would give the Jazz great shooting, a dynamic weapon in Mitchell and isolation scoring in Johnson and Hood. But the latter two have to get healthy and stay healthy for it to work. As for Rubio, the Jazz spent a first-round pick on him. And for as much as he’s struggled, they don’t have a point guard more ready to run the team and be in the starting lineup than he is.

I spoke to Dante Exum on Saturday, and he’s doing well. He’s in good spirits and doing cardio things like riding the bike. He’s traveling with the Jazz, so he’s staying engaged with the team. He’s ditched his post-surgery shoulder sling as well. There’s nothing official on a return, but the general feeling around the Jazz is he has a chance to return this season. One telltale sign is that the Jazz haven’t sought an injury exception for him. It doesn’t mean he definitively will return. But it’s not a slam dunk that he’s lost for the season.

Not in the starting lineup, no. It’s not likely the Jazz take Ricky Rubio out of the lineup. If for some reason they did and put Donovan Mitchell at point guard, Rodney Hood likely would be the shooting guard next to him, not Alec Burks. Burks is playing extremely well, and the way he’s revived his career this season has been nothing short of amazing. But the chances he becomes a starter for the Jazz barring significant injury are remote.

It would look the same as it currently does for much of the reasons I explained in the second question.