Jazz overtime win against the Pistons highlighted their lack of defense

The Utah Jazz beat the Detroit Pistons, 154-148, in overtime on Wednesday.

The 154 for the Jazz tied their all-time record for most points in a game. Wednesday night’s game also marked the first time in NBA history that one team tied a franchise record for points in a win and while the opponent tied a franchise record for points in a loss.

Both teams also shot the ball incredibly well. The Jazz went 51% overall, 50% from 3 and 91.4% from the free throw line. Detroit shot 53.3% overall and 46.3% from 3.

With all of this in mind, I can’t help but ask — was anyone playing defense?

The Sacramento Kings and Orlando Magic went into double overtime on Wednesday night (that’s a whole extra overtime period than what the Jazz and Pistons played), and the final score in that game was Kings over Magic, 138-135.

“For the majority of the game, our communication was very poor defensively,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “That led to breakdowns in coverages as well as not locating shooters.”

Ditto from Detroit head coach Monty Williams.

“They came down and we didn’t respond well to the slipping,” he said. “They slipped out and got some 3s, or they just drove it and got to the basket, and got the foul, which is something I gotta look at from a film perspective to see how we can get better.”

Fortunately for the Jazz, they are able to come away from this one with a win, and for the fans in attendance, they got to watch a shootout that was thrilling and made the big shots even more raucous in the Delta Center.

Also, as Hardy pointed out after the game, it’s better to learn lessons in a win than in a loss. It just feels better.

But boy did the Jazz absolutely blow it when it came to recognizing the hot hand and even just trying to slow down someone that is a known shooter.

“Bojan (Bogdanovic) is a heck of a player,” Hardy said. “He got off 15 3s tonight. Two games ago against Miami, Duncan Robinson, who played 32 minutes, only got five. I think we had massive slippage in our communication and recognition of personnel.”

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Bogdanovic made 8-of-15 against the Jazz and while a couple were tough shots, the others were against late-recognized closeouts that could have been avoided.

Additionally, the Jazz know that they’re not always going to have this kind of an offensive performance, and if they play this kind of defense they’re going to be struggling to find ways to fix it on the other end.

“Obviously it’s fun to score the ball and stuff, but I think it just puts a lot of pressure on our offense and execution,” Lauri Markkanen said.

“If we’re not getting stops we know that we have to get a score on the other end so it doesn’t get out of hand.”

Luckily for the Jazz that they were able to hit big shots that kept them in the game on Wednesday.

It’s great that the Jazz got the win and it’s great that they are on a three-game winning streak, especially considering that they are heading out on a three-game road trip to play against the top three teams in the Eastern Conference (Boston, Philadelphia and Milwaukee), but as exciting as the win was, the Jazz are going to try to forget how horribly they played on the defensive end as they move forward.