SALT LAKE CITY — Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz's 109-94 loss to the Indiana Pacers from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz painfully lacking in loss

The Jazz weren't really close in this one &mash; a 15-point loss that could have easily been 25 points. Once again, Donovan Mitchell was a bright spot in a team performance that was woefully lacking.

Jazz head coach Quin Snyder had an interesting take on what was going on, if I'm reading between the lines correctly: It wasn't that the Jazz weren't giving their best effort, but it was that their effort wasn't pointed toward team-oriented actions.

"We have a team that cares. We're not executing. We're not making plays that we need to make, whether it's making a shot or a pass. Sometimes it's as simple as doing your job, not focusing on 'Am I making my shot?' We have to have a collective focus," Synder said.

I do feel like that describes some of the Jazz's problems right now. Derrick Favors, for example, had a great game: 16 points on 8-12 shooting, seven rebounds, three steals and two blocked shots. But wait! The Pacers outscored the Jazz by 30 when Favors was on the floor.

For the team as a whole, cuts aren't always being finished, rotations aren't always made, and communication is sometimes lacking. It's the little things that are sinking this team, and most NBA teams are savvy enough to catch up with it.

I think another problem is the Jazz just aren't getting contributions from enough players. Joe Ingles ended up with zero points, one assist and zero rebounds Monday night in his 20 minutes of play. He was shockingly close to a 20 trillion. Ricky Rubio ended up with two points and zero assists. That's also extremely close to nothing.

The Jazz play an advantage offense, where each player creates a small advantage through a screen, cut or drive. Then the next player uses that small advantage and turns it into a bigger one. But when there are no-shows, as there have been in the last two games, that advantage offense never keeps an advantage. The result: tough shots.

2. Defense not impacting the ball

For huge stretches of this game, it seemed like the Pacers didn't ever feel on the defensive end. If Victor Oladipo wanted to drive inside, he could. If the ball happened to be guarded, he could kick it out to Thaddeus Young or Bojan Bogdanovic. The key to unlocking the Jazz's defense was one or two passes, not a sequence of brilliant plays.

Ekpe Udoh changed that a little bit. When Favors was in the game, the Indiana offense averaged 135 points per 100 possessions, an incredible total. When Udoh was in the game at center, the Pacers averaged 97 points per 100.

Now, some of that was because Udoh played most of his minutes against the Pacers' bench lineups. But Udoh impacts the game through his smarts on the defensive end and length that surprises teams.

It's enough to remind you of another guy who does exactly that: Rudy Gobert. And in fact, when Donovan Mitchell was asked what was missing on defense after the game, he started his answer by pointing at Gobert and saying, "This guy."

With his expected return about a week away, Gobert has been warming up during practice and on the court before games. Here he is playing one-on-one recently with Tony Bradley, for example:

Tony Bradley and Rudy Gobert going at it at the end of Jazz practice today. Look at Rudy with the turnaround J! pic.twitter.com/rIbHGbZc5F — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) January 14, 2018

The Jazz need Gobert back badly; without him, they've lost their entire identity.

3. The fan reaction to Rodney Hood

Rodney Hood was briefly booed late in the first quarter of Monday night's game after a 1-7 start from the floor. But that's not the only pushback he's received from fans, who have been very critical on social media of Hood's game in recent losses.

I asked him how he responds to his own fans' criticism.

"I feed off of it. S---, it is what it is," Hood said. "I just gotta be who I am. It is what it is. I've been through tough times before. I've had people give up on me before. This s--- is nothing new, and I keep moving forward.

"This is my fourth year. This is the best season I've had since I've been here. So, it is what it is. If people boo or they say s--- about me, I just keep going. That's all I can do. I keep my head up. I'm gonna keep shooting the ball. It is what it is. I just gotta keep fighting and not lose confidence because everybody else does."

Can we be honest? Jazz fans feeling negatively about Hood says more about fans' unfairly high expectations of Hood than anything he's done differently or wrong this season.

Hood is right: This is the best season of his career. He's shooting the ball more efficiently from outside and scoring more points, even as his usage has jumped from 22 percent to 27 percent. But he's not getting inside, he's not getting to the line, he's not helping — particularly in terms of playmaking or rebounding or defense. That's just who he is.

This is something I've been hammering all season long: Hood is a shooter, not a scorer. He's J.R. Smith. He's a rich-man's C.J. Miles. Those guys are actually pretty valuable, especially in a league that desperately needs wings.

Smith is making $14 million per season and Miles is at $8 million (and the Raptors traded away a first-round pick and DeMarre Carroll to give themselves space to acquire him). Every team in the league would put Hood in their rotation, and his inconsistency isn't anything you wouldn't expect from a player who shoots 90 percent of his shots from mid-range or deep: that's just mathematical variance.

But because Hood is a Jazz rookie, and because he was expected to be "the guy" after Gordon Hayward left, Jazz fans are expecting him to be more than he is. This pattern plays itself out every season in the NBA: A team drafts a player, fans imagine his best case scenario, and it's only on his next team (or the team after that) in which he can find his best role.

Now, the Jazz probably want to decide now whether they want to keep Hood for the long term. If they don't want to be the team that pays him, then it's time to trade him and get a longer-term asset. If they do, then they should match in restricted free agency.

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