Instant analysis: Jazz blown out by Wizards in bad road loss

Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal (3) goes to the basket past Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert (27) during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Thursday, March 18, 2021, in Washington. | Nick Wass, Associated Press

The Utah Jazz fell to the Washington Wizards on the road Thursday night, 131-122, and were down by as many as 24 points to the third worst team in the Eastern Conference.

High notes

• This is going to be a short and quick section and we’ll start with Joe Ingles. He started in place of Mike Conley, who is out on the first night of a back-to-back as management for his hamstring, and Ingles was a bright spot in a very dark game for the Jazz. He scored a career-high 34 points and hit 8 of 10 from 3-point range.
• Donovan Mitchell scored 20 of his 42 points in the third quarter. Offensively it was a really impressive quarter. I don’t want to give him too much credit though so we’ll just leave it at that.
• Royce O’Neal had a quietly nice game.
• The Wizards were on a five-game losing streak coming into the game, and they played probably their best basketball of the season and they made the Jazz look pretty bad. Credit to the Wizards. I can say that it was nice to see Bradley Beal smile.

Low notes

• The Jazz defense was incredibly porous and poor on Thursday. There were blown rotations, guys getting beat, no communications on switches and help and what looked like a real lack of effort, especially from the wing. Mitchell, Jordan Clarkson and Bojan Bogdanovic were sieves on defense, and it not only led to 131 Washington points but also impacted the Jazz offense in really bad ways.
• The Jazz scored zero fast break points through the first three quarters and had just one transition bucket in the fourth. If they’re not playing good defense and they’re also not scoring in transition then they’re not going to be able to beat the bad teams, much less the good teams.
• Rudy Gobert went 2 of 10 from the free-throw line.
• The Jazz turned the ball over 17 times, leading to 24 Wizards points.
• Bogdanovic was 2 of 12 from the field, 0 of 6 from beyond the arc. Jordan Clarkson was 2 of 11 from the floor, 1 of 8 from deep. Georges Niang was 1 of 4 from long range. The scoring wasn’t there.
• Mitchell might have had an excellent offensive third quarter, but the defense dropped off toward the end of the quarter and the Wizards stormed back in the third and maintained a double-digit lead.
• Bogdanovic has never gotten the calls he feels like he should on drives to the basket. He should know by now that sulking on the baseline and complaining about a no-call almost always results in the other team scoring on the other end. It does not help anyone. It’s like reading a scouting report and just not paying attention to something that you know an opposing player is going to do. He knows what’s going to happen and he continues to do it.

Flat notes

• In all this was the Jazz’s worst game of the season and it came against one of the bottom-dwelling teams in the league. The Jazz have now lost five of the last seven games. This is a rough stretch that isn’t going to do anything for the confidence of the team, and it isn’t going to do anything for the people who have doubted the Jazz all along.
• The Jazz must play better defense. They have to. This was a bad one, folks.

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