SACRAMENTO — As the fans chanted “Light the beam” inside Golden 1 Center on Friday night, four purple lasers shot from the top of the outside of the arena, signaling to the city of Sacramento that the Kings had added another win to their record.
The Utah Jazz ended up on the wrong side of a 126-125 game and were the latest victim of the Beam Team.
It’s hard for the Jazz to look back on this three-game road trip and swallow the fact that if just a couple of things were different, they could be heading back to Utah on a three-game win streak.
Instead, they’ve lost three in a row and will have a tough task on Saturday night when they host the Miami Heat in the final game of 2022.
If they make a couple of free throws in the final minutes against the Golden State Warriors, they probably win that game on Wednesday. If they secure a defensive rebound or even make one of the 24 3-pointers they missed against the Kings, they probably win.
“I know we didn’t play our best game in San Antonio but we were close to getting that one, too,” Lauri Markkanen said, referring to the Jazz’s loss on Monday night. “A couple things go differently and we’re 3-0 on this trip. It sucks, but that’s part of this league and we have another chance tomorrow.”
Playing for Lauri
The Jazz are obviously disappointed that they’ve fallen to 19-19 and are sitting in 10th place in the Western Conference after this road trip, but maybe even more, they’re disappointed that they’re losses have taken away from the brilliance of what Markkanen has been doing.
The Jazz are well aware that Markkanen is a candidate to make his first All-Star team and to represent the Jazz when Utah hosts the All-Star festivities in February, so especially after his incredible 36-point performance in Sacramento, they’re hoping that the fans who are voting continue to do so despite the losses.
“Lauri’s been playing his butt off this whole week scoring and stuff, and if we get those wins for him this week, it’s a big week for him,” Jordan Clarkson said.
“As a team…we’re going to look back at the tape and we’re going to take a lot from these (losses) and try to string some wins together in this time before the All-Star break.”
On Friday night, Markkanen, much like the rest of the Jazz, struggled to get going from beyond the arc, but he didn’t let those missed looks slow him down at all.
Markkanen was an incredible 15 of 17 from inside the 3-point line, and his shots came as a result of his athleticism, versatility and physicality.
“Lauri is a beast,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said after the game. “He’s big, strong, athletic. He got downhill, did a great job as a screener, getting into the pocket, getting on the rim, he did a good job cutting, his teammates looked for him.
“I thought he played very physical on the offensive end, which was really great to see… I thought it was a sign of great growth that on a night when he doesn’t have his 3-ball going, which he’s relied on a lot, that he’s still able to come up with 36 points.”
Mike Conley foul trouble
The Jazz were just starting to put together some stops followed by balanced scoring when the fourth quarter started, and Mike Conley was the conductor of that train. These are the Jazz’s first two offensive possessions of the fourth:
Conley works to find Walker Kessler for an easy alley-oop, then on the next trip down the court he drives in, draws the defense into the paint and kicks out to Clarkson, who swings the ball to the left to Malik Beasley.
By then, Conley was sprinting out to the left corner, where he was wide open for 3. His shot gave the Jazz their first lead of the game.
But on the Kings’ ensuing possession, Conley got called for a ticky-tack foul, his fifth of the game.
“That hurts,” Hardy said. “It’s always tough when you have to take out a guy who’s one of your most important players when he’s in a rhythm.
“There’s a lot of times you guys have seen throughout the season that I’m happy to play guys when they’re in foul trouble, but when you have five with 10 minutes to go in the game, that’s a long way to go, especially when you’re guarding De’Aaron Fox.”
On Conley’s fourth and fifth fouls of the game, he tried to plead his case for Hardy to challenge the calls, but NBA coaches have their own real time monitors in the hands of some of the assistant coaches, and they look to them to make the decision on whether or not to challenge a call for the most part.
“We understand and the players understand that in the moment they think that it’s not a foul, but when we look at the monitor, it’s on our staff to determine what has the chance to be overturned and what doesn’t,” Hardy said.
“You have to really be correct for the play to get overturned. That’s where we have to separate the emotion of the moment that sometimes the players have and just tell them like, ‘I understand but we’re not just going to burn our challenge to burn our challenge.’”
In hindsight though, Conley is upset that he didn’t advocate for Hardy to challenge his third foul, and after looking at it, I think he’s right.
“There was one where I completely didn’t touch (Domantas Sabonis), he just tripped and fell and I was the closest person to him,” Conley said.
“I was like, this my third, do I tell him to challenge it? I understand not challenging, you save it. but I also know how it is sometimes easy to pick up numbers four and five. It’s frustrating, but we did the right thing — didn’t challenge it and held on to try to win the game.”
Not only was Conley the only Jazz player who really had it going from 3-point range on Friday, but he also finished the game with eight assists, three of which were to Markkanen, and even on plays where he wasn’t credited with an assist he was responsible for getting the offense going.
Not having Conley in those crucial minutes at the beginning of the fourth quarter really made a difference in the game.