3 Jazz players ejected in the 4th quarter before loss to Pacers

The Utah Jazz were beat by the Indiana Pacers 111-100, after three of their main rotational players were tossed from the game. A skirmish in the fourth quarter, started by Rudy Gobert and Myles Turner, ended up with both players being ejected as well as ejections for Donovan Mitchell and Joe Ingles.

High notes

• If I’m being honest, the most impressive parts of Thursday’s game were the things the Pacers did. They scored easily, got wide open looks, seemingly had no trouble driving straight down the middle of the court and completely out-rebounded the Jazz by a large margin. 
• The athleticism and strength from Eric Paschall has been so surprising. It’s not just that he’s able to score and create for himself and is strong in traffic, but he seems to have that intangible quality of knowing when to get a timely bucket and he’s good at doing so at a moment that lights a fire for the team.
• The Jazz’s security team deserves some serious props for the work they do sprinting into action whenever there is some sort of confrontation on the court. We’d be looking at worse than ejections and possibly even more ejections if it weren’t for their work.
• There was some other minimally good stuff, but not really good enough to overshadow the rest of what happened on Thursday.

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Low notes

• Well ... there was an NBA fight. So, that’s not great.
• Ejections for Gobert, Mitchell and Ingles all but assured the Jazz were going to lose this one, but they didn’t really deserve to win it before the three of them were tossed.
• You wouldn’t expect players to just stand by while their teammates are in an altercation on the court so it’s understandable that there were multiple players involved once Gobert and Turner started tangling. But just because it’s understandable doesn’t make it any less detrimental to the game.
• The Jazz’s defense never really gave much resistance to the Pacers. There were a handful of possessions and then some late push, but the Jazz looked almost disinterested in rebounding the ball and playing hard defensively.

Flat notes

• At some point the Jazz are going to have to come to terms with how many points they’re giving up because they’re worried about not getting a foul call or missing a shot.
• I think that the best instance of transition defense I saw from the Jazz came nearly four minutes into the fourth quarter. That’s too late to start getting back and denying a quick bucket. 
• If the Jazz had frustration on Thursday night because they were losing to the Pacers, then they should have used that frustration to correct their own mistakes and not worry about what else was going on in the game.