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DALLAS — Luka Doncic flexed and egged on the crowd. He had just hit his third step-back 3-pointer of the third quarter, announcing to the 20,000 delirious fans at American Airlines Center that he was all the way back.
By that point, he was just having fun. It was effortless; and most of all, there was no pressure. It was the middle of the third quarter, but the game was already over.
Doncic had made sure of that.
His 19-point third quarter was the exclamation point to Dallas's emphatic 102-77 win over Utah in Game 5 as the Mavericks took a 3-2 lead in the first-round series. Game 6 will be in Salt Lake City on Thursday.
Doncic finished with 33 points and 13 rebounds to lead the Mavericks, and his superb third quarter put an early dagger into Utah.
Actually, as magical as Doncic was for portions of Game 5, that is giving him too much credit. He probably could have walked to the second row of the stands and sat and watched the entirety of the second half — and probably even the entire game — and the Mavericks would have rolled to an easy win.
Utah hadn't scored under 90 points all season; they only got to 77 on Monday. That was highlighted (low-lighted?) when the Jazz went on a 5:29 stretch without scoring a point.
It was a stretch that helped make what was a 2-point game at the 8:45 mark of the quarter into a 20-point deficit in the final minute of the half. The worst part? It didn't even feel like the extreme from Monday. It slipped right into the rest of the 48 minutes of torture for Jazz fans.
Utah had the No. 1 offense in the NBA this season and have been one of the most feared 3-point teams in the league for the last three seasons. All those stats meant nothing to a Dallas team that flew around the perimeter with zeal and made the Jazz look like a shadow of themselves.
The Jazz went 3 of 30 from the deep in Game 5, setting a record they wanted nothing to do with; that shooting display was the worst in playoff history among teams with at least 25 attempts.
Utah got some open looks early, but when those didn't fall, the team predictably fell into an isolation trap. Players tried to do much and accomplished all too little.
"We did miss shots, but we need to try to create for one another," Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. "There was a couple of stretches in the game where you saw that."
But too few and too far between.
Only Jordan Clarkson, who led the team with 20 points, had a game that resembled his regular output. Donovan Mitchell had 9 points on 4-of-15 shooting, Bojan Bogdanovic missed all of his nine shots, and Mike Conley was 1 of 6 and finished with 4 points.
Bogdanovic did see one 3-pointer go down, but it was negated due to an offensive foul by Royce O'Neale away from the play. It was that type of night for Utah.
"Just us taking bad shots," Bogdanovic said of the historically bad 3-point night. "They're really, really active on defense, rotating and forcing us to take those tough shots. .... I think that we've got to do a better job offensively moving the ball."
To add insult to injury — or in this case injury to insult — Mitchell limped off the court late in the fourth quarter with a tight hamstring. At that point, the Jazz trailed by 28 points with practically zero chances of mounting a comeback.
Mitchell will undergo an MRI on Tuesday in Salt Lake City, the team said. He initially said he'd be "fine" to play in Thursday's Game 6, but hedged a little when he added that he'd see how the MRI goes.
"I'm a competitor," he said.
Yet, there wasn't anything competitive about Monday's contest.
Snyder said he didn't want to put the game on just a bad shooting night, that it went deeper than that — the shots weren't good enough to blame it all on an off night from the perimeter.
Mitchell, meanwhile, said he didn't think the team would have another night like Monday. But Game 5 just continued the series trend of Utah not being able to generate open looks from deep. At this point, it doesn't appear things will suddenly change by Game 6.
History states the Jazz are in a perilous position. The team that wins the fifth game after a 2-2 split goes on to win the series 83% of the time. So how do the Jazz bounce back?
"I think it's just get them home, just get ready and try to get a win," Gobert said. "It's one game at a time."
After Monday's historically poor night, the Jazz may be down to their last one.
