Jazz mailbag: The Jazz aren’t going to tank. Consider this rough patch more of a hiccup.

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.

This analysis would be spot-on in a normal season. The Jazz usually are great at keeping their business out of the limelight and the media. They are one of the best teams in the league at that.

This season is rare. Rodney Hood and Derrick Favors both are free agents this summer, and after the Gordon Hayward conclusion, one could make the logical assumption that the Jazz would rather make a trade than lose a key piece for nothing, especially if those pieces aren’t in the long-term plans. Favors certainly isn’t. Hood began the season as a future piece, but Donovan Mitchell’s rise — they play the same position — compromised that. Hood being on the block has more to do with the fact that he’s a sixth man with the Jazz going forward and probably would be a starter on many other teams. Are you going to pay your sixth man $18 million? That’s what Hood could be offered. So it makes sense financially if the Jazz are able to secure the right deal. Be sure that the Jazz won’t give away Hood. After all, they have team control in restricted free agency.

Chicago’s come up because the Jazz and the Bulls had discussions revolving around Nikola Mirotic. Most of the league is talking to each other around this time. Things will flesh out a little more as we get to the final week of the deadline.

The Jazz don’t tank. They are dead set against that. Trading for a star means trading a star, which is robbing Peter to pay Paul. So don’t count on that, either. They are 19-28 this season and headed toward a top-10 draft pick if things don’t improve soon. And there’s a decent chance the Jazz can be players this summer on the free agent market. They will be one of the only teams with money to spend — most of the league is expected to be at or over the salary cap — and there are a number of enticing free agents who will be out there. I don’t think this will be a difficult rebuild for the Jazz. More like a hiccup.

Donovan Mitchell has exceeded expectations. For example, they didn’t realize he would be this adept at playing point guard so early in his career. They knew he had the potential to be dynamic defensively. But they didn’t realize he would be so far along offensively. Tony Bradley is developing. He’s still a ways away from being able to help the Jazz. At the same time, he’s young and he has a lot of time.

I don’t think it really matters if there’s a lot of interest around the league for Dante Exum because the Jazz almost certainly are going to keep him. He’s solidly in the long-term plans for this franchise. Let’s put it this way: The Jazz think Exum’s injury has hurt the team almost as much as Rudy Gobert’s injury.

It’s the way defenses have been guarding him. Take Monday night’s loss to the Atlanta Hawks for example. When Donovan Mitchell executes a pick-and-roll with Rudy Gobert, the Hawks took whoever was guarding Ricky Rubio and whoever was guarding Derrick Favors and planted them in the lane. So even if Mitchell got past his primary defender, there were two other guys in the lane to greet him, forcing him to kick the ball to Rubio or Favors. The Hawks guarded Mitchell the best I’ve seen a team guard him all season. They clogged the middle and made life difficult on him. The Jazz have to get more shooting onto the roster to prevent this.

The Jazz have always had great locker rooms, even in the down years that I’ve covered the team. The current locker room is a frustrated one, but it’s not at all fractured.

I truly think Ekpe Udoh could make a run at All-Defense. He’s almost as good a defender as Rudy Gobert, which is saying something. He’s Utah’s best big man at hedging and guarding perimeter players. He’s a spectacular rim protecter. He’s a great communicator. If he were even half as good offensively, he’d be a real impact player in this league. As is, he’s a solid backup.

They just have to keep playing together, and the chemistry will come. Their lockers are next to each other. The two sat in their stalls talking about their pick-and-roll play, where it had to improve and where they missed each other after the Jazz beat the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night. Mitchell and Gobert are probably the two most competitive guys on the team and the two biggest perfectionists. That bodes well for the Jazz because they also are their two best players. So I think the chemistry will improve significantly in time.