The one moment that the Phoenix Suns fought back, they actually fought.
As Jared Dudley jawed with Ricky Rubio after a third-quarter play, Marquese Chriss ran up and shoved Rubio blind, sending him tumbling to the court. For a minute, there was a fracas on the court. Only arena security and some heads-up teammates and coaches prevented the melee from escalating any further.
The rest of the 48 minutes belonged to the Utah Jazz.
Winners of eight straight games, the Jazz (39-30) punished the Suns in a 116-88 blowout with plays such as a thunderous Rudy Gobert dunk over Chriss. They embarrassed them by picking steals out of their hands, which Rubio in particular (four steals) did with ease. They hurt them with plays such as Donovan Mitchell plucking a lob out of midair and slamming it down.
The Suns could’ve just gone home with a loss for its trouble. Instead, it also had two ejections, Chriss and Dudley, that got them no closer to putting on a respectable showing. Instead of the Jazz just adding another link in the chain, they made the game feel a little personal.
It already felt personal to the Jazz: Given that Rubio took a cheap shot two weeks ago from Minnesota’s Jeff Teague, Utah was even more on edge for the latest hit. Coach Quin Snyder seemed to just contain his rising temper in his postgame press conference, where he implied that more punishment than just the ejections were needed to deter future confrontations.
“It just keeps happening,” Snyder said. “Our point guard was leveled, knocked to the ground — two times in one possession tonight. Guys are going to have each other’s backs, and where that goes, when it gets like that, you never know what happens.”
Phoenix Suns coach Jay Triano was equally passionate in a counter-argument, in which he said Ingles and Mitchell (who received technical fouls) deserved to be ejected. Rubio declined to comment on the incident, but a Jazz complaint to the league seems inevitable.
But in the larger spectrum, the skirmish was a minor point of intrigue in Utah’s latest big win. The team has had a lot of them (two over the Suns) during a run of 20 wins in 22 games, which is tied for the NBA’s best in that span. They also moved up to seventh place in the Western Conference, edging out the San Antonio Spurs by virtue of a season tiebreaker, and just a game-and-a-half behind fourth-place Oklahoma City.
“The group of guys we’ve got is pretty unreal,” Ingles said. “To play the way we are playing, playing together … it was good fun out there.”
The game was close for just over a quarter as Utah struggled to shoot, making just one of their first 10 shots from 3-point range. But with a 36-point second quarter, the Jazz began the avalanche that buried Phoenix.
In particular, the Suns had no counter for Gobert, who scored 21 points and added 13 rebounds and a pair of blocks. Mitchell led the Jazz with 23 points, including a few dunks and one acrobatic scoop shot. Taking a lead of 23 points early in the third quarter, the rest of the game was in cruise control — the Suns did themselves no favors with 22 turnovers.
While frustration clearly built up for Phoenix, the Jazz took issue with how the Suns expressed it.
“It was cheap,” Mitchell said. “It was crazy how just because you’re all down by 25 … it’s all right.”
The game also featured the return of Dante Exum, who had 10 points, three rebounds and two assists in just over 14 minutes. It was his first action since returning from a shoulder injury suffered — also against the Suns — in preseason.
