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Rubio, Mitchell lead Jazz to an ugly but productive win against Lakers; Utah now in fourth in West

By https://s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/sltrib/143cf344-f93c-44ab-9605-3f086bd1af63.jpg Kyle Goon
 | April 3, 2018, 6:16 p.m.
| Updated: 11:23 p.m.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz forward Jae Crowder (99) celebrates his 3-point shot as the Utah Jazz host the Los Angeles Lakers at Vivint Smart Home Arena Tuesday, April 3, 2018

In the standings, it is a win.

But the Jazz haven’t made winning easy for themselves lately, and Tuesday night was the latest example.

Even with an unbelievable shooting display from Ricky Rubio, and even with more rebounds, more assists, fewer turnovers and big edges in the paint, the Jazz were locked in a six-point game with the Los Angeles Lakers with 58 seconds to go. While Utah managed to finish out the latest lottery-bound team that’s given them trouble, it wasn’t pleasing to coach Quin Snyder.

“All I’ve heard is ‘the playoffs, the playoffs’ — we’re not in the playoffs,” Snyder said. “There’s no ‘X’ next to our name on the standings. We need to play with more urgency and more focus.”

While they have not clinched a playoff spot, the Jazz did move up to fourth in the Western Conference standings after the San Antonio Spurs’ loss at the L.A. Clippers late Tuesday night.

The sharpness Snyder sought was lacking particularly on defense, where the Jazz allowed the Lakers to meander out to a 9-0 lead in the first two minutes. While Utah caught up, it never caught on defensively in that quarter, giving up 31 points to a Lakers group led by former Ute Kuzma (26 points overall) and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.

In particular, Snyder thought his team had to over-help, leading to open 3s. The Lakers made 14 of their 28 attempts, shooting a spicy 60 percent in the first half from deep. The Jazz also allowed Kuzma, Caldwell-Pope and Julius Randle to get downhill to the basket, leading to 36 free throw attempts for the Lakers. Los Angeles didn’t make Utah pay much, hitting only two-thirds of them.

It’s getting to be a running theme for the Jazz lately: In their past five games against teams with losing records, the average margin has been 5.2 points, including a loss to the Atlanta Hawks.

“You gotta focus against every team,” Rubio said. “Those kind of games against Atlanta at home, I can remember, you’re expecting the level of intensity we had against Minnesota, for example. You can lose a game to any team in this league.”

For the second consecutive game, Rubio’s shooting was a huge difference. The point guard went off behind the arc, hitting four 3-pointers in the first half on the way to 25 points at the break. He finished with 31 in the game and rallied the sellout crowd at Vivint Smart Home Arena after the latest sluggish start.

Donovan Mitchell helped pick up the offense in the third quarter, notching nine of his 26 points as the Jazz led by as many as 15 points in the quarter, before a sub-par stint from the second unit frittered the lead down to six points.

The result wasn’t sealed up for sure until 28 seconds left, when Rudy Gobert caught a pass from Rubio in the paint and slammed home a dunk for the eight-point lead. The Lakers fouled afterward, if only to give Randle — an assist away from a triple-double — a chance to stack his numbers.

Not the closest of calls, but not the proudest of wins, either.

“We’ve got to find that focus. We can. We’ve had it, but it has to be important,” Snyder said. “If you are playing one game, the whole point of that is to be dialed in on that game. If you’re not dialed in on that game, whatever you are thinking about isn’t what you need to be thinking about. That can’t happen right now this time of year if we want to make the playoffs.”

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