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.

I don’t think anyone holds a specific personal grudge against Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey. Ialso think the Jazz go through plenty of games where they get adifficult whistle. Their loss to the Houston Rockets on Mondaynight serves as an example for me. Houston took 43 shots from 3-pointrange, yet the Rockets got to the free-throw line 27 times compared toeight for the Jazz. Those kind of statistics are difficult to swallowfor the Jazz, who said all the right things publicly following the lossto the Rockets but privately were upset at some of the calls. But everyteam goes through this. And calls in this league tend to go tothe best teams. So if the Jazz ever become a top-threeteam in the Western Conference, you probably will see them get a betterwhistle.

Derrick Favors certainly is a candidate to be traded, and he probably won’t be in a Jazz uniform nextseason if he makes it to unrestricted free agency. But Rudy Gobert’s injury woes complicate things a bit. WithUtah’s franchise center not healthy, it may not be prudent to tradeFavors at this moment because he provides a safety net for Gobert. Ifthe Jazz do trade him, their target likely would be a playmaking powerforward who can stretch the floor or a wing who can shoot anddefend. At this point, I think the Jazz hold on to Favors until theFebruary trade deadline then asses where they are.

It’s absolutely good enough. The question for Donovan Mitchell is whether he canbe the main decision maker on a title team, and I’d saythe answer is yes at this point. Mitchell’s rate of improvement from training camp toChristmas has been amazing to watch. It leads me to believe he has achance to be one of the elite players in the league one day.

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