Can Hayward or Favors be Utah’s First Options?

In an attempt to score, every team has a Plan A.

Last season’s Plan A was Al Jefferson on the block.  Big Al’s execution of that plan earned frequent complaint from Jazz fans.  He was too slow, too finesse, too inefficient.  He just wasn’t, said the consensus, real #1 stuff.

This season, Jefferson will play in Charlotte, leaving shoes for someone to step into as prime weapon in the Jazz arsenal.  The most likely candidates are Gordon Hayward on the perimeter and Derrick Favors in the post.  But without Jefferson, how might these two bear up while anchoring an NBA offense?

What Does a Real (Not Just Ideal) #1 Option Look Like?

The supreme offensive options in the league are the two best players in the world, LeBron James and Kevin Durant.

In contrast, the Magic and Raptors were forced by their talent dearth to elevate #2 (perhaps even #3) option players into their primary scorer roles.  The numbers show how poorly that worked.

In between, we have the average #1 option in the league last season:

A face to go with the statistical average might be LeMarcus Aldridge (20.4 PER, .530 TS%, .485 eFG%, 26.5 USG%, 108 ORtg, 4.8 OWS).  That will leave the analytics crowd cold, but that’s what the numbers say: last season, LeMarcus Aldridge was an average NBA first option in terms of efficiency.

How did the Jazz’s first option incumbents’ performances last season stack up to this standard?

Hayward

Hayward looks like he just might fit the part.  He neared, met, or exceeded the average in nearly all these efficiency categories. But projecting these numbers into the coming season is questionable because of one statistic: usage. Given more minutes and with the burden of taking more shots and generating more of the offense with the ball in his hands, will Hayward be able to maintain this level of efficiency?

His PER will almost certainly increase.  However, he will be severely challenged by the new role to maintain these other numbers given his new place of focus in opponents’ scouting reports.

My guess is Hayward’s usage will jump to somewhere in the 24-25% range.  In that case, Jazz fans should be well pleased if he produces slightly below the efficiency of an average first option player.  Something in the area of .540 TS% and .490 eFG% seems ambitious yet reasonable.  Turnovers will be a substantial challenge, and I think he’d do very well to keep his turnover percentage below 14.

Not surprisingly, the player last season who best characterizes this projection for Hayward is Paul George: .531 TS%, .491 eFG%, 15.2 TOV%.  Such a season would be an unmitigated success for Hayward.

But that doesn’t mean he would be a good first offensive option, particularly for his position.

21 of the of the NBA’s 30 teams used perimeter players as their primary offensive option last season.  The average efficiency of those players is below:

Don’t let the slight PER decrease fool you: the perimeter players are more efficient than the overall average.  It isn’t by much and it comes at the cost of a higher turnover rate, but all the other numbers are slightly better than the average.

If Hayward’s best realistic efficiency next season is akin to George’s last season, he will be near the bottom third in efficiency for primary perimeter options.  That would put him among last season’s performance of these players: Eric Gordon, John Wall, Rudy Gay, Josh Smith, Jrue Holiday, Monta Ellis, Kemba Walker, DeMar DeRozan, Arron Afflalo, and Goran Dragic.  He would be better than the weakest of these offensive players (Dragic, Afflalo and the like), but more akin to them than the super elites like James and Durant.

Favors

It is hardly a surprise, but the numbers suggest Favors just isn’t first offensive option material yet—though he may not be as far away as might be assumed.

Offensive post play in the NBA is currently lacking, to put it mildly.  Last season, only nine teams used a post player as their first offensive option, and then with less effectiveness and efficiency than their perimeter counterparts.  The average offensive efficiency they produced is listed below in comparison to Derrick Favors’ statistics from last season:

While Favors was far from an offensive dynamo last season, statistically, he isn’t completely out of his league in this comparison.  His TS% and eFG% are actually right in line with or better than players like LeMarcus Aldridge, DeMarcus Cousins, Carlos Boozer, and Greg Monroe.

But where Gordon Hayward looks to increase his usage by two to three percentage points in his new role, Favors would have to double that increase to become a true primary post option.  A four to six percentage point jump in usage is big.

That increase in usage combined with substantially more minutes, possibly as many as ten more minutes per game, means it is impossible to predict just how Favors’ efficiency might evolve given a place as an offensive feature.  It’s possible that with more game time to acclimate to the NBA combined with his own maturation, his efficiency may increase.  This happened with Dwight Howard in his third year, for example.  Or it’s possible that the greater offensive responsibility will highlight Favors’ offensive weaknesses, causing his efficiency to decrease under the increased burden.

There is little way to tell at this point, though Favors’ free throw shooting history is encouraging.  A .595 shooter as a rookie, he saw precipitous increases in both his second (.649) and third (.688) seasons.  If he improves his free throw shooting at anything close to the 4% or 5% seasonal increases of the past, he would shoot between 71% and 74% from the line this season.  For a player who attempts more than 5 free throws per 36 minutes (and with a substantial increase in usage, that rate would most likely go up), those extra few points make a huge difference to TS% and a player’s offensive efficiency.

Big Al’s Shoes

By the end of the year, we’ll know much more about both players, as well as the future of the Jazz.  But don’t be surprised if neither is any more efficient a primary option than Al Jefferson his last few seasons with the Jazz.

Big Al received a great deal of criticism in his Jazz tenure, some of it deserved.  But his reputation as an inefficient primary option, something easy to replace, simply isn’t warranted.

As the go-to guy on the Jazz, Jefferson was good.  Not great, but good.  His lower than desired TS% (due to his relatively few free throw attempts) was balanced by his extremely low turnover rate, the lowest of all first options across the league.  He shot better than the average team #1, produced a higher ORtg and more OWS, and offered a more diverse game with his above average PER.  When judged against other post players, his performance is even better.

Both Hayward and Favors should best Jefferson’s TS% next season.  Hayward takes and makes a lot of shots from both the three and free throw lines; Favors should be in the top fifteen in the league in both free throws taken and made, as well as in offensive rebounds.  Also, they should both be better all-around players next season than Jefferson ever was, given his defensive struggles.

But don’t expect an upgrade on the offense end this season.

Both Hayward and Favors will turn the ball over a lot where Jefferson protected possessions better than any top option in the league.  Also, while more jumpers from Hayward will result in more offensive rebounding opportunities, it will also result in more long rebounds turned into fast breaks.  For a defense-oriented team, as the Jazz seek to become, fast break points from turnovers and long rebounds can be killers.

Hayward, with some help from Favors, will fill the shoes left by Big Al and prove to be a passable #1 option this season—just don’t be surprised if Al’s shoes prove a little bigger than expected, and the team’s young captains require more growth before they truly fill them out.