Instant analysis: Phoenix Suns roll past shorthanded Utah Jazz

Phoenix Suns guard Cameron Payne drives as Utah Jazz forward Royce O’Neale (23) defends during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Friday, April 30, 2021, in Phoenix. | Matt York, Associated Press

The Utah Jazz, without Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley, fell to the Phoenix Suns 121-100 on Friday night at Talking Stick Resort Arena.

High notes

• The Jazz have a 45-18 record on the season, now tied with Phoenix in the win-loss column. Although the Suns own the head-to-head tiebreaker, the Jazz have a pretty easy schedule ahead of them. They’re a very good team tied for the best record in the league, but you wouldn’t know it from Jazz fans on social media. The Jazz are still in a very good spot with just nine games left in the regular season.
• With two of the Jazz’s best players unavailable, Quin Snyder played around with the rotations a little bit, bringing in Trent Forrest and Jarrell Brantley at the end of the first quarter, starting the second half with Derrick Favors in place of Rudy Gobert and then bringing in Ersan Ilyasova to play with Forrest later on. Playing with rotations and subs is a good thing, especially if the game is an obvious blowout.
• Also, Snyder unloaded the bench with just over eight minutes left to play, giving the Jazz’s most heavily used players a good amount of rest heading into tomorrow’s back-to-back home game against the Toronto Raptors.
• Joe Ingles was aggressively shooting the ball and hit a 3 right out of the gate for the first score of the game. Love to see that kind of quick trigger and aggressive approach from him. He couldn’t hit another 3 for the rest of the night, but he kept shooting, and that’s a good sign.
• There were a few times I found myself a little surprised by Jordan Clarkson’s on-ball defense. When he wants to be, he can be a pretty pesky defender.

Low notes

• Royce O’Neale passes up open shots still. Nothing new there.
• Bad shooting all around for the Jazz.
• One thing you absolutely can’t do against the Suns is commit live-ball turnovers. They run and they run fast. The Jazz must have missed that memo.

“In this type of situation, against a team that is as good as Phoenix, you’re never going to be perfect, but you can’t make mistakes.” —Quin Snyder

Flat notes

• I tried my best to talk people off the ledge before this game even happened. This was pretty much a scheduled loss considering that the Jazz were without Mitchell and Conley. That does not mean the Jazz are a bad team. It does not say something bigger about the Jazz that they have lost three games to the Suns. The Jazz lost the fourth game of the season to the Suns, an overtime game when they shot 25% from 3-point range, then they lost on Friday without two All-Stars. This is not the end of the world, no matter how much people on Twitter want you to think it is.

“You can’t look at this like it’s the end of the world or nothing. They still got games to play, we still got games to play. We’ve got to suit up tomorrow and beat Toronto.” —Jordan Clarkson

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