INDIANAPOLIS — Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz's 104-84 win over the Indiana Pacers from KSL.com's Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz capitalize on defensive game plan

You probably know by now. The Jazz's game plan is all about forcing teams to take the shots that the Jazz want them to take: contested pull-up mid-range jumpers. Over and over again, the Pacers were forced to take these shots late in the shot clock, after Rudy Gobert locked down the paint and the Jazz's length stopped the Pacers' perimeter attack.

Look at this shot chart from Indiana Wednesday night:

The Pacers took half of their shots from the mid-range tonight, 44 attempts in all. And they actually shot pretty decently on those looks: 40 percent is above league average from there. Meanwhile, they only had 20 looks at the rim and 22 3-point attempts.

You'd generally expect any team to shoot better than 3/22 (13 percent) from downtown, and the Jazz did get lucky that the Pacers only made that many. But they only allowed four corner 3-point shots by staying attached to those shooters, and they got a lot of those shots from the Pacers' 3-point shooters that you'd prefer to leave open: Myles Turner, Cory Joseph, Thaddeus Young, and Lance Stephenson rather than Victor Oladipo and Bojan Bogdanovic.

The other nice thing the Jazz did: stop the Pacers' fast-break attack. The Pacers are the NBA's fourth most efficient team at scoring after turnovers, scoring an average of 1.3 points per possession after an average of only nine seconds, according to Inpredictable. That means the Pacers rank third in the league at fast break points, behind only Golden State and the Los Angeles Lakers.

"Transition defense was the biggest emphasis on the way in," Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said after the game. "Some of that was taking care of the ball on the offensive end, which we did a really good job of in the first half. We needed everyone to run back."

The result was a Pacers team that just didn't have a dependable way to score efficiently. Really, the only time the Pacers got offensive traction was midway through the third quarter when they started to get multiple looks at the rim through the offensive rebound. Once the Jazz started to gang rebound efficiently, they ran out of ideas.

That's the formula for the Jazz's No. 1 ranked defense in 2018, and it worked again to get them a big road win against the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference.

2. Joe Ingles and Rudy Gobert pick and roll

The Jazz have won a few games this season with the Joe Ingles and Derrick Favors pick and roll combination, most notably the comeback win against the San Antonio Spurs at home before the All-Star break.

But Favors' absence Monday against Orlando forced Ingles to work more individually with Gobert, and it seemed like they developed a better understanding of how to work off of each other in that game. That showed itself in Wednesday's contest with repeated success over and over in the pick and roll between those two.

Here's Ingles delivering that bounce pass early, once Myles Turner came over to stop his roll:

Triple Team videos: the Joe Ingles/Rudy Gobert pick and roll was working for huge stretches of the night. Ingles typically delivers the ball around the FT line, and Rudy's getting better at finishing when he catches it there. Here's one example: pic.twitter.com/BOQFyBjjhm — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) March 8, 2018

Then later, Ingles used the threat of that pass to give himself a wide-open layup.

And then the threat of Gobert's passing opens up the pass-fake-easy-layup combo for Jingles: pic.twitter.com/BPNrZ9NtGA — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) March 8, 2018

That pass fake is such a useful tool. Without it, the league's rim protectors (guys like Turner) could catch up with Ingles slow-motion, limited vertical layup attempts. But since Ingles freezes them first, he has time to make the simple layup.

I do think it's fair to say that the Jazz did exploit the youth of the Pacers' big men tonight. Turner and Domantas Sabonis aren't the league's best pick and roll defenders, and it did seem like they hesitated when deciding to make a play. Ingles had 10 assists on Wednesday, the first Jazz player this season not named Ricky Rubio to get double-digit assists.

"A lot of it is how defenses play," Ingles explained after the game. "If they play in between I'm going to get a layup or he's going to get a dunk."

The other critical factor: Gobert's finishing. Ingles delivers the ball pretty early to the rolling big, and Gobert found a way to finish those plays tonight rolling downhill. Pacers color commentator Quinn Buckner is astonished here.

Here's another example, as this time Gobert gets stopped on his roll but still makes the shot. pic.twitter.com/h6ceWaFmaM — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) March 8, 2018

We'll see if that continues against more experienced defensive big men, or if Gobert's finishes on the move can continue to improve. For now, though, this week has provided some very promising signs.

3. Donovan Mitchell passing to end the quarter (and room for improvement)

Donovan Mitchell started the game on fire, scoring 10 points in the first quarter thanks to threes like this.

But he didn't score at all in the second quarter. Instead, he came back in with the intent to use the attention the defense was giving him to find good looks for his teammates. On three consecutive possessions late in the quarter, Mitchell found the open man. The first was this one, an alley-oop to Gobert. Turner is stuck in no-man's land again here.

Donovan Mitchell had assists on three straight possessions in the 2nd quarter for the Jazz. He starts out with this well timed lob to Gobert, catching Myles Turner in no-man's land: pic.twitter.com/pnRISNESmf — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) March 8, 2018

The second one was the prettiest. With all of the defense's attention focused on the strong side of the court, Mitchell whipped a surprising bullet pass all the way across the court, probably about 50 feet. Because of the pace of the pass, Jae Crowder had an open three. Mitchell just made something out of nothing.

The best assist is this 50-foot bullet from Mitchell to Crowder, just completely surprising the defense (and honestly me watching at home) to get an open look out of nothing: pic.twitter.com/kraBmFP8Er — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) March 8, 2018

The third was a great defensive play that led to the right decision from Mitchell. As the Pacers tried to punish Mitchell for overplaying his man on the perimeter, Mitchell intercepted the backdoor pass using his wingspan. Then, he drove down the paint, and, finding himself defended by two Pacers, kicked it out to Ricky Rubio for the open corner three.

Finally, here he strips the ball on an attempted backdoor cut, drives the paint, and just kicks it out to Rubio for the corner 3: pic.twitter.com/bgi8b2m60A — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) March 8, 2018

Now, it's not all good: Mitchell then ended the quarter with a turnover (on a strip from Oladipo as he navigated the paint) and a credited missed layup (though I think he was trying to dump the ball off to Gobert). On both, you get the sense that if he were a little more under control, he could have avoided the turnovers and made the correct pass on time.

Still, there's a narrative out there (emanating largely from Philadelphia, home to Mitchell's Rookie of the Year competition Ben Simmons) that all Mitchell does is score. And while tonight wasn't one of his best nights (20 points on 6-15 shooting, six assists, and six turnovers), he's responsible for a much larger portion of the Jazz's efficient play creation than some would have you believe.

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