After his monster performance in Game 2, Derrick Favors might be the matchup advantage the Jazz need

As much as Donovan Mitchell has pushed himself to stay focused, he admitted there was a Game 2 moment where he caught himself ball-watching.

It came in the first quarter, as Derrick Favors rose up against three Oklahoma City defenders for one of Mitchell’s missed layups, then leapt back up over those same three Thunder players for a powerful dunk. Mitchell couldn’t help but stand at the baseline for an extra beat — in awe.

“I took a second to get kind of get back on defense,” he said. “I was like, ‘Man, he’s having a game right now.’ He’s been like that all year, but he’s definitely turned it up.”

Favors’ monster performance in Game 2 was instrumental for the Jazz in evening up the first-round series. With 20 points and 16 rebounds (including eight on the offensive glass), he played the role of big man well. But then he had other facets — including a pair of 3-pointers and three assists — that stretched the definition of his position a little further.

In fact, what is Derrick Favors? He’s flipped between the power forward next to Rudy Gobert and the second-unit center. On Wednesday night, he had plenty of success in both roles. And if he can keep it up throughout the series, he might just be the match-up problem that keeps the Thunder coaching staff up at night.

Favors has always been a multi-threat big man when healthy. This playoff series might be the biggest stage where everyone’s been able to see it.

“We’ve never really thought of him as one ‘position’ or the other,” Coach Quin Snyder said, making quotation gestures with his fingers. “We’ve thought of him as a basketball player and try to have him understands his strengths and play to his strengths.”

The biggest way that came through Wednesday was on the glass, as OKC backups Jerami Grant, Alex Abrines and Raymond Felton found out the hard way. On one first-quarter possession, Favors got three offensive rebounds on his own.

It was a turnaround from the previous game, when he had five. While rebounding is often a game of chance, with unpredictable timing and angles, Favors’ aggression on the boards shone through. Thunder center Steven Adams said both he and Gobert are strong rebounders, but they have distinctly different styles — he compared Favors to longtime post threat Zach Randolph.

“He has good timing for when players are gonna shoot, and he also has a really good base,” Adams said. “The bigs with a really good base it’s really tough to box them out and drive them out. Once he establishes himself, it’s pretty tough from there.”

But yet Favors also has decidedly non-big man strengths: Consider that his first basket of Game 2 was a corner 3-pointer. He’s far from reliable there yet — Cleaning the Glass statistics indicate he’s just 24 percent on corner threes for the season. But in a series, or even a game, he can make himself enough of a threat to force the defense to react, spacing the floor in a way that’s helpful to Gobert and drives from the guards.

He’s also a capable passer, both finding kickouts after rebounds, and swinging quick pocket passes to Gobert. Favors has three assists in each of the games of the series so far.

His match-up with Carmelo Anthony, in that regard, is one of the most interesting of the series. As a stretch power forward, Anthony is capable of drawing Favors out to the perimeter with his shooting, and occasionally can slip the big man on a drive to the rim.

But Favors isn’t completely out of his element guarding Anthony: On 34 possessions in Game 2 where the two were matched up, Anthony was 4 for 9 with 10 points. By contrast, Anthony guarded Favors on 48 possessions — and Favors was 6 for 10 for 14 points (including both threes).

“I’m pretty sure other teams and other opponents, they see I’m 6-10, they think I’m a five-man or whatever,” Favors said. “They try to take advantage of it, but it just feels good to go out there and move the way I know I can move and play the way I know I can play. And then the team can take advantage of that.”

One of the biggest benefits is that the threat of Favors can sell out Oklahoma City’s defense. That was the case on a fourth quarter possession, where Favors was setting a screen for Mitchell and Paul George and Anthony were preparing for a switch on Favor’s roll to the rim.

The problem was that the Thunder had prepared for the wrong threat: Mitchell stopped short as George tried to slide around Favors, driving to his left. As Russell Westbrook dropped into the paint to defend, Mitchell slipped a pass to a wide-open Ricky Rubio, who nailed a 3-pointer.

“It makes a big difference,” Mitchell said of Favors’ threat. “Some guys are kind of hesitant, so when you over-commit, you have shots like that to Ricky, or when you don’t commit, he and Ricky have been playing great together with that little two-man game in the paint.”

The subtext of the series is that Favors is a free agent this summer, and NBA executives tend to notice a standout performer in the playoffs. Adding a 3-pointer (if an inconsistent one) has added another thread in his game to extend him beyond the traditional big-man definition in the NBA. While Anthony might have been considered tougher matchup issue for Favors going into the playoffs, the inverse might actually be true — which could help Favors drive up his market value.

Of course, right now, those issues take a back seat to the present focus: winning. And if the Jazz make it out of the series with the Thunder, it seems that Favors will have to play an integral part of it.

“It was definitely a good game for me,” he said. “I wanted that win, so I had to do what I had to do to get that win and put the team in position to win the series.”