Utah Jazz: 1 stud and 2 duds from first home loss vs Pacers

The Utah Jazz may be developing a bad habit of playing down to their competition. Last night’s 111-100 loss against the Indiana Pacers marked the third time this season that the club lost to a sub .500 team. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the only bad habit the Jazz are developing: dust-ups, skirmishes and ejections are becoming routine for this team. Last night’s conflict was particularly intense, resulting in ejections for Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell and Joe Ingles in the fourth quarter. We’ll touch more on that later, but the Utah Jazz can’t pin this loss on the refs. They lost this game of their own volition.

That’s a predictable outcome in a game where T.J. McConnell (21 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists) outplays Mike Conley (6 points, 8 assists). Otherwise, it’s worth noting that the Utah Jazz did get a strong performance from Donovan Mitchell. He scored 26 points on 11/20 shooting from the field and 3/7 shooting from three-point range while chipping in an additional 5 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals.

We’re not naming him as a stud, for the simple reason that it feels disingenuous to name 2 Utah Jazz studs in a game they lost to an inferior opponent by double digits. One other Jazzman came a little closer to saving this one for the team, and earned the stud designation in the process.