Indianapolis • As the third quarter finished, the Jazz found themselves in a situation that’s become familiar since the All-Star break: They had a tenuous-looking lead, and they were struggling to shut the door on the road.
But once Rudy Gobert subbed in with a 10-point lead in hand on the Indiana Pacers, the Jazz had something better than a hot player — they had an unstoppable play.
The pick-and-roll with Gobert and Joe Ingles smashed the Pacers defense like a battering ram, leading to a game-clinching 15-2 run in a 104-84 Jazz win on Wednesday night. It was a powerful statement from Utah (35-30), which won its ninth straight game on the road and inched up on the back of the Western Conference playoff pack with the Clippers and Nuggets.
With Denver’s loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Jazz are now in a three-way tie for eighth with the Nuggets and Clippers. Los Angeles sits in eight based on win percentage.
“We’ve been not the greatest at kind of finishing and closing,” said Ingles, who finished with his first NBA regular-season double-double of 11 points and 10 assists. “We’ve talked about it a lot, but it was nice to take [the lead] from 10 to 15, from 15 to 18 and then kind of finish out.”
Gobert and Ingles rarely start the fourth quarter, and coach Quin Snyder declined to explain the change in his typical substitution pattern. But he didn’t really need to explain: The duo were dominant against a lineup of Pacers reserves.
Before Indiana made a shot in the fourth, it took more damage than it could handle: a Gobert dunk; an Ingles finger roll; a Jonas Jerebko fastbreak bank; a Gobert Eurostep layup (he was particularly fond of that move postgame) and a short Gobert jumper. Utah didn’t miss a shot in that three-minute span.
With the Jazz leading by as many as 23 in a one-sided fourth quarter, fans began streaming out of Banker’s Life Arena with more than eight minutes to go. Gobert finished with 23 points and 14 rebounds, his fourth straight double-double in one of the most dominant offensive stretches of his career.
“As much as anything, [the success in pick-and-roll] is the execution and the precision in the passing,” Snyder said. “Joe’s making good decisions with the passes and finishing, as opposed to trying to throw something that’s not there. Their reads have improved.”
If the Jazz closed out the win with Ingles and Gobert, they built it with the team’s calling card: defense.
The only Pacer who could find the bottom of the net consistently was Myles Turner, who scored 24 points on 10-for-14 shooting with his ability to stretch the floor from center. But everyone else had a human reaction to Gobert patrolling the middle: fear. He had only one block, but more than a third of the Pacers’ shots would up being midrange jumepers, with opponents preferring to shoot over him rather than challenge him.
Outside of Turner, the rest of the Pacers shot 32 percent from the field. That also included a dismal 3-for-23 mark from 3-point range.
The Jazz were most pleased with their transition defense, which robbed the Pacers of the easy baskets that’s helped make them get to where they are, tied for fourth place in the Eastern Conference.
“The fact that the other team doesn’t want to come in the paint makes them a jump shooting team,” Gobert said. “Then it’s on the guards to try to disrupt and contest shots. … We did a great job tonight.”
While Gobert and Ingles starred at the offensive end, they were hardly the only contributors: Ricky Rubio had another surge on the road, finishing with 18 points, seven assists and six rebounds. Donovan Mitchell scored 20 points, and Jae Crowder led the bench with 16. The Jazz had 30 assists on 41 baskets, the third-highest assist percentage of the season.
The Jazz split the season series with Indiana, who beat Utah at Vivint Smart Home Arena in January. The Jazz have won 16 of their past 18 games.
