Offseason Q&A Volume 1: Keeping Favors, Korver’s Unclear Future & Other Answers About Current Jazzmen

Tweeps and readers are curious: how do the Jazz keep Favors, and what if Korver retires? (Alex Lowry via utahjazz.com)

There were way too many questions submitted for this first installment of the offseason Q&A to handle them all at once. So let’s make like a magician with a saw and split this thing in two.

This first round of questions is mostly focused on current Jazz players. Readers were extremely curious about Derrick Favors’ future, the implications if Kyle Korver were to retire, and Ricky Rubio’s future. So we’ll start there, and then we’ll drop wave two first thing on Wednesday.

The next round of questions will include talk of specific offseason targets, plus answers about how different cap mechanisms and exceptions could work to help Utah shape its roster. 

But for now, let’s start with current Jazz big man Favors and his Utah teammates.

Current Jazz players

Favors’ option has to be picked up 7/7. Free agency starts 7/7. Could the Jazz sign a max guy early on that day and then go into the luxury tax by picking up Favors’ option or using his Bird rights? -@cphilits

Are we allowed to rescind Favors and then use Bird exception for a longer deal after we sign other FA? -@ultimatejazzfan

Lots of people are saying to get a good FA we will have to lose Favors. What if we pay the luxury tax? Could we keep him and sign a big FA? If that is possible, Could you see the Jazz doing that? -@Deige22

There were a lot of questions around the available mechanisms to keep Favors, so let’s start there.

First, it helps to understand structurally what Favors’ contract is. People (including Favors himself) have referred to his deal as a “team option” as a sort of shorthand, but that’s not technically what it is. It is a non-guaranteed contract, with a salary protection date of July 7. This is an important structural difference, because it means that the only way Utah clears his $16.9M off their books is by waiving him. And when you waive a guy, you lose Bird rights to the player. So if the Jazz try to pull a cap maneuver with Favors, they’d first have to waive him, and then their only option to re-sign him would be using remaining cap space or a tiny exception that likely wouldn’t come near his asking price (more on that). There’s no option to sign someone else first and then deal with Favors — he’s under contract until/unless the Jazz cut him, and once they cut him, they no longer have Bird rights.

There’s not even a guarantee that Favors would clear waivers. For 48 hours after a player is waived, any team with enough cap space or a sufficiently large exception can claim him off waivers and assume his remaining contract. You rarely see waiver claims in Favors’ salary range, but this year is different; roughly half of the league will have the option to create cap space, and some teams are going to miss out on the available free agents. For a team that missed on other options, a 1-year, $16.9M commitment to a player as good as Favors would be a decent backup plan, and a way to kick their cap flexibility to the 2020 offseason.

So bottom line, if the Jazz want to keep Favors, that $16.9M will be on their books throughout free agency.

That doesn’t necessarily prohibit them from signing a good player, but it makes it tougher. Even with Favors’ $16.9M on the books, they could create a max slot, but it would require them to rescind all free agents, possibly waive Raul Neto, and trade one or more current roster players without taking salary back. You can mess around with the cap calculator to find ways to keep Favors and still create a $27-32M max slot.

Also can Favors be used as a trade and then released by another team if it takes place before his guarantee date? Like a draft night trade? -@GaretDuckworth

Yes, Favors can be traded, but it’s not very likely. Teams used to trade players with non-guaranteed (or partially guaranteed) contracts almost as a cap-clearing asset, but the NBA closed that loophole by changing the way that those players count in trades. If Favors is traded, the team that acquires him has send enough salary (or be far enough under the cap) to absorb his entire $16.9M salary, but for outgoing trade purposes, Utah has to count him at his guaranteed amount — which is $0. That makes it hard to work a deal out, and removes any cap advantages of acquiring and cutting a player.

So anybody who contacts the Jazz about acquiring Favors is likely doing so because they’re interested in employing Favors. Which is possible. He’s really freaking good.

Is it possible to use up all of our cap space, and then sign Ricky Rubio with the mid-level exception (MLE). Or is there anyway to go about that? -@utahjazzman47

In order for a team to utilize its cap space, it first has to renounce exceptions like the MLE. Salary cap exceptions are just that — exceptions for a team that doesn’t have cap room. So you don’t get both. 

The league and players did agree to create a new exception called the “Room MLE” for teams that give up their full MLE to go under the cap but then spend all of their cap space. But it’s tiny compared to the MLE, and likely not enough to meet Rubio’s salary demands. The Room MLE will be about $4.7M this summer, whereas the non-taxpayer MLE will be $9.2M. 

If the Jazz choose to operate as a cap space team, then their only exceptions after using said space will be the Room MLE and minimum contracts.

If Kyle Korver does decide to retire, would his entire contract be removed from the cap sheet? -@KantsImperative

If Korver ends up retiring, are the Jazz able to include his contract in trades? -@D_HUG

No, his contract would not be removed from the cap sheet. Utah would still be on the hook for the remaining guaranteed portion of his contract: $3.44M. They could use the stretch provision to spread the cap hit on that figure over three seasons, but they don’t get to exclude his salary from their cap sheet altogether. Only in rare medical cases do teams get complete cap relief when a player retires, and even then they only get said relief after the player has missed a year due to a career-ending injury. That wouldn’t apply here.

And to D_Hug’s question, yes, Utah could include him in trades, but the same thing applies here as with the Favors trade question. For outgoing trade purposes, Utah has the calculate the trade on their end as though they’re trading a $3.44M player, but the receiving team has to be able to receive his full $7.8M. That’s obviously more workable than in Favors’ case, and it’s not crazy to think the Jazz may send some team cash to pay Korver’s remaining salary along with a second-rounder for taking on the cap hit. But they’d probably only do that if they absolutely needed the room, meaning they have a free agent on the line who’s ready to sign and they need a tiny bit more room to accommodate.

Do you anticipate Rubio being back? Do you anticipate Favors being back? In what scenarios do you see Ekpe Udoh and/or Thabo Sefolosha back? How high is the likelihood we see all of Georges Niang, Royce O’Neale, and Neto back? -@AustinJazzHoops

We’ve talked a bit about Rubio and Favors — it’s probably one or the other, to be honest. Utah can’t add an impact player without letting one or both of those guys go, so it probably comes down to the positional profile of any players they’re able to acquire. If they can swing a deal with free agent, Tobias Harris, for example, then they may keep Rubio but let Favors walk. If they acquire someone like Kyle Lowry (who some believe will be available if Toronto underwhelms and Kawhi Leonard walks), then Rubio is redundant but they could keep Favors. In a vacuum, it’s more likely that Favors stays, just because of the way his contract is set up and the fact that the Jazz can unilaterally control that decision.

The Jazz will surely remove Udoh’s and Sefolosha’s free agent rights, meaning the only way I really can see them sticking around is if they’re willing to re-sign at the minimum. Which isn’t crazy, given where they’re at in their careers.

O’Neale and Niang will be back, for sure. Royce is a high-level rotation player who will make $1.6M next season. That’s a total no-brainer, because you’re not replacing his skills or impact for anything close to that low. Niang isn’t quite as good, but is just as cheap, and Utah really believes he can become a Joe Ingles Lite type of player: a big forward with shooting and playmaking skills. Neto’s $2.15M non-guaranteed salary makes him a candidate for a cap-motivated cut if they’re close to meeting some free agent’s asking price, but I’m sure they’d rather keep him. He’s close to Rudy Gobert, and he is a solid third point guard who has acquitted himself well when circumstances have demanded that he play a rotation role for stretches.

Will Tony Bradley be given a shot next year if Favors isn’t retained or do they go after a proven backup 5? -@Ballislife_Cy

I’m just still not sure we’ve seen evidence that Bradley is an NBA dude just yet. He played just 36 minutes this season, all in garbage time. If he were remotely close to being someone on whom Quin Snyder would rely for actual meaningful minutes, I think we would have seen him for more than 36 minutes. There were times when the Jazz kept a two-way player active over Bradley despite being shorthanded up front. The signs just don’t point to him being anything more than a deep bench piece in the short term.

More coming soon in volume 2 of this Q&A. I’ll tackle questions about cap room, exceptions and we’ll start to talk specific names in terms of potential Jazz targets.

So to @blainefarr, @KantsImperative, @Dialed_in4, @jstuart_, @LilBax, @AustinJazzHoops, @tomcat340, @joel_hiller, @newbymiles89, @GaretDuckworth, @Jeffersoniandoc, @gubihero and @Camber… don’t worry, answers to your remaining questions are coming!