There was no lack of drama in the Utah Jazz’s overtime win against the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday night, and one of the most dramatic moments of the game will serve as an important lesson moving forward.
“This is where, as a coach, you always kick yourself. Could I have handled that 60 seconds differently? Could I have drawn our play and talked about multiple defensive scenarios? I don’t know. But that’s what I’ll be driving home thinking about.” — Jazz coach Will Hardy
With 5.2 seconds left to play in regulation, Lauri Markkanen hit a 3-pointer that put the Jazz up, 138-135. Without a timeout, former Jazz man Alec Burks quickly inbounded the ball to Isaiah Livers who passed the ball back to Burks, who raced up the court and got off a buzzer-beating 3-pointer that sent the game into overtime.
In that moment, many were left wondering, why didn’t the Jazz foul? Well, that would have been ideal, but the craziness of the situation got away from them.
“When the emotion is super high and the building’s going crazy, it’s easy to lose focus on the strategy part,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. “Obviously we would have liked to have fouled when Alec Burks ran the ball up the court right around midcourt when he and Collin (Sexton) made contact with each other.”
Though there are still some who don’t believe in fouling when up three, and the strategy often depends on the amount of time left on the clock and where a team is inbounding the ball. Hardy is a proponent and this was the ideal situation in which the strategy would have been the go-to move.
Had the Jazz fouled Burks, two free throws would have put the Jazz back in possession with even less time on the clock and a lead. The game would have likely ended after four quarters rather than going into a nail-biting overtime period.
Part of the problem Wednesday night though, was that the Jazz weren’t really expecting to have a three-point lead. Markkanen got off a 3-pointer because the Pistons defended a switch in a way the Jazz weren’t expecting, leaving Markkanen open and Jordan Clarkson made a great read to pass to him.
The play was initially made for Clarkson to get into the paint. If the Jazz missed a shot they knew the Pistons were going to be running hard since they didn’t have any timeouts remaining; they would likely look for Bojan Bogdanovic, who had hit 8 of 15 from 3-point range. So the Jazz knew who they needed to locate in the final seconds.
Not covered during that timeout — what if the Jazz hit a 3.
“This is where, as a coach, you always kick yourself,” Hardy said. “Could I have handled that 60 seconds differently? Could I have drawn our play and talked about multiple defensive scenarios? I don’t know. But that’s what I’ll be driving home thinking about. Is there things that I could have communicated better in that moment?”
That being said, the Jazz have gone over these scenarios many times in practice and during film sessions. The players should have known the time, score and game situation and they did, but they realized it just a second too late.
“Me and JC were looking at each other and I was like, ‘I should have fouled, right?’” Sexton said. “And he was like, ‘No one told you.’ But it’s all good. Those are possessions that are going to help us in the future, because we’re gonna be in that same situation.”
Clarkson said that realizing they were going to need to stay focused for the upcoming overtime, he didn’t want to make Sexton feel bad for not fouling and he also said that he should have been yelling out to Sexton on the play.
Hardy, Sexton and Clarkson all said that they would take the blame for the missed opportunity and all said that going through the situation in a live game will help for the lesson to sink in more than any film session or conversation during practice.
“It all makes sense in a quiet film room,” Hardy said. “But you make a big 3 and there’s four seconds left and the whole building is going crazy and everybody’s scrambling around trying to find their matchups and figure out what’s happening. You know, those are learning moments for our team.”
Fortunately, the Jazz were able to learn this lesson and also get the win.