Utah Jazz – Phoenix Suns react: Jazz win eighth straight as tempers flare

The Utah Jazz made it eight wins in a row with a 116-88 victory in last night’s heated battle against the Phoenix Suns.

Just as I predicted in my week preview and my latest podcast, last night’s contest between the Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns turned out to be a chippy one. After a slow start, the Utah Jazz fought back to take the lead midway through the second quarter and never looked back from there. They led by as many as 31 points and would go on to earn a relatively easy 116-88 victory.

However, the game itself was very much overshadowed by a scrum that broke out in the third quarter.

An otherwise ho-hum contest between a surging Jazz team and a lottery-bound Suns team went sideways when Phoenix’s Jared Dudley and Marquese Chriss seemingly lost their minds at the same time. Chriss felt he was fouled by Rudy Gobert on a dunk attempt and while Shaquille Harrison tried to help him back to his feet, Ricky Rubio began initiating the fast break while the two Suns players were down.

Suns forward Jared Dudley apparently took exception to the whole situation and proceeded to level Rubio to the floor, supposedly to stop the fast break. It was an uncalled-for cheap shot, but it paled in comparison to the one Chriss doled out shortly after. As Dudley and Rubio were exchanging words, Chriss apparently decided to take out his anger on what he thought was a foul on Gobert on the smallest guy on the court by blind-siding Rubio and sending him to the ground once more.

This caused things to erupt as Joe Ingles and Donovan Mitchell came sprinting over to stand up for their guy. You can see the whole thing go down in the clips below:

https://twitter.com/DefPenHoops/status/974477257656979456

My two cents? Sure, I’m looking through Jazz-colored glasses, but I felt like Gobert’s contact on Chriss absolutely didn’t merit a foul call. Perhaps there was a bit of contact with his hand on his back, but no real extension by any means. It looked more like Rudy was trying to get out of the way and avoid a foul rather than contest the shot. While a foul call would have made the missed shot look less silly, I truly think Chriss was just upset that he air-balled a dunk.

But of course, he wasn’t about to take out his anger on the seven-foot-one Rudy Gobert. Instead, he played tough guy by going for a blindside cheap shot of the six-foot-four, 190-pound Ricky Rubio. Well played, hot shot.

When all was finally diffused, Dudley and Chriss were both ejected from the game while Mitchell and Ingles were given technical fouls. Those techs were probably warranted considering the way that Ingles and Mitchell rushed in there, but I absolutely love how quick they were to jump in and defend their guy from the shenanigans put on by the Suns.

Suns coach Jay Triano apparently didn’t agree as he felt both Ingles and Mitchell should have been ejected as well, as you can see in the clip below:

I seriously disagree considering that Ingles and Mitchell didn’t initiate the problem whatsoever, but simply came in defense of a pair of dirty plays. I can understand the technical foul calls. Ejections would have been reason for uprising.

Dudley later gave his two cents on what happened as well:

It’s clearly been a frustrating season for the Suns and trailing by 19 points (at the time) to a pesky defensive team like the Jazz likely sent them over the edge. Understandable, but still those plays have no place in the game. Hopefully Dudley sees the replay and realizes not only how ridiculous it was to get upset over the no-call on Chriss, but also how out of line both he and his teammate were.

I’ll conclude my recap of the scrum with a few of my favorite takes from Twitter last night:

While the scuffle took all the headlines, there were actually a lot of good things about the game for the Jazz. Joe Ingles had 17 points that included going 4-of-9 from deep. Rudy Gobert had 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting as well as 13 rebounds. Ricky Rubio had a double-double with 12 points and 11 assists. And Donovan Mitchell logged yet another 20-point game as he finished with 23 on 47.6 percent shooting while logging a game-high plus/minus of +31.

He also had an incredible finish at the rim, which I’ve included below for your viewing pleasure:

https://twitter.com/World_Wide_Wob/status/974485445731082240

The Jazz also got nice contributions off the bench from Jae Crowder, who finished with 15 points, and Dante Exum who of course made his 2017-18 debut in the contest. It was awesome to see Exum back on the court after missing the entirety of the season thus far due to a shoulder injury. He had plenty of rust, as we all expected, but he also did a lot of things well and showcased his athleticism on a number of occasions. All told, he finished with 10 points in 14 minutes of action.

But what I was most happy with from the Jazz was how well they took care of the ball. Turnovers had been a huge issue for them in nearly every game since the All-Star break, but in last night’s contest against Phoenix, they had just seven giveaways. Sure, that’s partly due to the Suns’ putrid defense that is one of the worst in forcing turnovers in the league, but it was still a nice reversal for the Jazz in an area where they had been struggling.

Last of all, Utah did an exceptional job of holding the Suns’ leading scorer Devin Booker in check. Booker was held to a dismal 3-of-18 (16.7 percent) shooting night that saw him log just 12 points.

Next: Utah Jazz aim for eighth straight win in Dante Exum’s return against Phoenix

With the victory, Utah officially moved into seventh place in the Western Conference. They’ll look to continue their surge up the standings and to extend their eight-game winning streak when they host the Sacramento Kings on Saturday at 7:00 PM MT.