Pacers Crush Deflated Jazz 121 to 88

Raul Neto (25) flounders after a loose ball in the Utah Jazz’s embarrassing 121 – 88 home loss to the Indiana Pacers. (Jeff Swinger/USA TODAY Sports)

Story of the Game

The Indiana Pacers’s 121 to 88 thumping of the Utah Jazz provided a clear profile on Utah’s struggling offense. 

After a season-high 133 points scored in a desperately needed win in Sacramento, despite missing leading scorer Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz offense crashed back to earth once again at home. While much attention will go to Utah’s anemic shooting, and rightly so, the crux of the offensive problems is as it has been all season: lack of a ball handler who can threaten a defense.

To perform well offensively, the Jazz need quality shot creation from at least two of their primary ball handlers. In Sacramento, they got precisely that. Ricky Rubio (27 points on 16 shots), Joe Ingles (18 points on eight shots), and Alec Burks (14 points on 12 shots) all generated offense efficiently for the Jazz.

The key was their determination to get into the paint to score, which they did in spades. 

Those three ball handlers made 11 of 11 attempts at the rim, which fueled high-octane offense despite  average shooting from three (33-percent) and the free throw line (76-percent).

Contrast that with tonight’s game.

With Mitchell out of the lineup, all three of Rubio, Ingles, and Burks combined to finish only four shots at the rim. 

Without ball handlers capable of making a defense pay at the rim, Utah’s entire offense breaks down.

Teams pack the paint against Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors rolling to the rim. Perimeter defenders stay in passing lanes, ready for late passes by Ingles and Rubio when they get to the rim without truly aiming to score, which creates turnovers and has left the team’s transition D in tatters. Plus, it puts tremendous pressure to Jazz shooters to carry the offense. A cold stretch from long range becomes a scoring drought, which only increases the pressure on a team with already shaky shooters across the roster.

The Jazz have defensive and shooting problems, no question, but the core challenge they face this season is simple. When they don’t have at least two ball handlers who can create shots, and points, for themselves while creating opportunities for others, they won’t win.   

Stars of the Game

Superstar: None

Utah’s leading scorer, Derrick Favors, managed only 13 while Dante Exum of all players led the team in shots with 11. No one even aspired to lead this team tonight.

Secondary Stars: Derrick Favors (13 points, 8 rebounds, 1 block) and Rudy Gobert (12 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 blocks)

For what it’s worth, Favors and Gobert were the team’s leading scorers, combining for 25 points on 16 shots while blocking a trio of attempts inside. All of that is right about their season averages. The problem is the team has no effective way to get this pair more shots because every team they play is hedging extra defenders into the paint with little or no fear Utah’s smalls will punish them either at the rim or with made jumpers.

Secret Star: None

Once again, every Jazz player was on the wrong side of tonight’s plus-minus and none managed to tilt play in the home team’s favor, even for a small stretch.

Stats of the Game

62 – Bench points for the Pacers. Five of their players off the pine shot better than 50-percent from the field.

Minus-9 – Jazz disadvantage on points off of turnovers, a huge bugaboo this season.

66.1 – Indiana’s true shooting percentage. 

20 – Utah had five players who got at least 10 minutes of play with usage rates over 20-percent: Exum (37.5), Crowder (24), Grayson Allen (23.3), Raul Neto (22.2), and Favors (21.1). That’s the thumbprint of dysfunctional offense.

Sundries

• It’s seriously odd, but the Jazz may  have single-handedly resurrected the midrange jumper as a relevant shot in today’s NBA. The problem is they’ve done so for opponents. All season team’s have played to get those long twos the Jazz defense is willing to give up, and they’re making them. Indiana made 13 jumpers between 10 feet and the three point line, including all seven attempted from the left side of the court. Three of those were drained by Myles Turner on three identical plays run consecutively in the third quarter in a stretch that snuffed out what competitive spirit the Jazz had.
• No Pacer player shot the ball more than 13 times, while no Jazz man got up more than 11 attempts. Yet Indiana’s offense looked completely comfortable while Utah’s was clearly strained. Quin Snyder’s so called blender created by player movement and passing isn’t blending anything without guards to give the appliance the energy it needs.
• Domantas Sabonis had another strong game with 13 points, 10 rebounds, and six assists. In both games this season, he was the smartest player on the court.
• Doug McDermott was light years better than any Jazz player tonight with 21 points on 13 shots to go with six rebounds and two assists. Utah’s perimeter defenders are not good right now. That’s Doug Freaking McDermott we’re talking about!
• Teams aren’t afraid of Utah’s pick and roll, nor should they be. They’ve realized that Rubio and Ingles both drive to pass, so penetration by these players doesn’t deform the defense. Defenders don’t get out of position. So long as that is the case, Utah’s offense won’t work. More than anything else, the Jazz need players with the ball in their hands to attack the rim, hard and fast and looking to score. Then they need to finish opportunities. There’s no fixing this broken offense without that.
• Utah’s best quarter, the first, saw them score 25. That matched Indiana’s worst quarter (the second). Every other quarter by Utah resulted in 23 or fewer points, while every other quarter by Indiana racked up at least 30. Total domination. 

After this blowout on the dark side of a back-to-back, the Jazz are struggling: with energy, and confidence, and chemistry. Yes, the schedule has been brutal, with heaps of plus-.500 teams and hardly any games at home. The team has had little to no practice time and has seen its best offensive player in and out of the lineup.

But the simple truth is the Jazz are playing poorly far more often than they are well. They rank 24th in the league in point differential, a generally dependable assessment of how good a team is. And it’s warranted. With a quarter of the season gone by, they have to be asking if that’s really who they are — a bad team.

If they want the answer to be no, they have a chance to change trajectory fast. Their next three games are against the Nets, Hornets, and Heat, teams with a combined record of 25 – 35 despite playing in the lighter weight Eastern Conference. Before the season started, many would have favored the Jazz in all three of those games, despite each being on the road.

Now each one is a serious question. Getting Mitchell back would help. But with him or without, this team really needs all three games if they want to get back to anything nearing the course they charted for themselves entering the season.