Utah Jazz: Lowry, Raptors keep the Mitchell-less Jazz winless at home

The Utah Jazz are still winless at home after Kyle Lowry and the Toronto Raptors owned the court at Vivint Smart Home Arena on Monday.

The last time the Utah Jazz finished their first 10 games with a 4-6 record, Quin Snyder was in his first year on the bench and the Gordon Hayward-led squad notched just 38 wins on the year.

Four years later, and in spite of sky-high expectations entering the 2018-19 campaign, Snyder and company surprisingly find themselves at 4-6 once again. The latest setback came Monday night in the form of a 124-111 beatdown at the hands of the Toronto Raptors.

In a game where both teams’ big stars couldn’t go — Donovan Mitchell and Kawhi Leonard were both nursing ankle injuries — Kyle Lowry led a balanced Raptors attack that shredded the Jazz D in epic fashion.

Lowry, OG Anunoby, Serge Ibaka and Fred VanVleet all had 17-point nights for Toronto, while Pascal Siakam chipped in with 16 of his own. As a team, the Raptors shot 57 percent from the floor, hit 13 3-pointers and won in the paint (58-56), as well as in transition (22-17).

The Jazz front was especially bad over the final four minutes of the first half; the Raptors scored 20 points over that short span to wrest control over what had been, to that point, a back-and-forth contest.

From that point, they never looked back.

Offensively, the Jazz did move the ball well, wracking up 29 assists on 38 made baskets. However, they hit on just 8-of-31 shots from distance and continued to struggle from the charity stripe, missing 14 of their 41 attempts.

In particular, Ricky Rubio and Joe Ingles scuffled offensively, combining to go 4-of-23 from the field. As a team, the Jazz did manage to score 111 points, but a lot of that was garbage time theater; the Jazz scored 39 points during the final frame when the game was already well out of hand.

The only real individual bright spots on the night were Alec Burks and Royce O’Neale. Burks dropped a team and season-high 22 points after missing the previous four games with a hand sprain. Meanwhile, O’Neale added 11 in relief of Mitchell.

The Jazz clearly have some kinks to iron out before reclaim their throne as the Association’s best defensive squad and an elite team in the Western Conference. Sure, missing Mitchell was a factor in this game, but the fact that Utah has already been lit up for 110-plus points on six occasions this season is the bigger issue.

Stranger still is the fact that the Jazz have yet to produce a win at home, raucous crowd and altitude be damned.

Regardless, I would continue to advise Jazz fans to keep away from the ledge. There will be ebbs and flows throughout the season and, right now, a difficult schedule, injuries, some individual slumps and a handful of correctable issues have conspired to keep the crew down.

One losing streak does not a season make, Mitchell won’t be banged-up forever and better times lie ahead. We may just have to wade through a bit of muck before they get here.