LOS ANGELES — It’s hard to sum up what happened on Wednesday night any better than Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy did.
“In the second half, it seemed like everybody in the gym knew that Dalton Knecht was going to shoot the next shot, with the exception of a few people,” Hardy said. “The problem was that those few people were on our team.”
The Los Angeles Lakers’ rookie, who was taken 17th overall in the 2024 draft, unleashed for a career-high 37 points to lead the Lakers in a 124-118 victory over the Jazz. Knecht connected on nine 3-pointers, tying the NBA record for 3-pointers made by a rookie in a single game.
By the time Knecht had sunk four 3-pointers — hitting two of the first four with Collin Sexton’s hand right in his face — the Jazz should have learned the lesson to stay close to him. He was a hot shooter, who came into the league known for his 3-point ability, and was clearly having a good night.
But his next two attempts were uncontested. The nearest defender was Jazz rookie Cody Williams. First, operating in zone defense, Williams allows too much distance between himself and Knecht. The next time down the floor, in man coverage (Knecht has now made five treys), Knecht gets Williams on the switch and again the rookie doesn’t get nearly close enough to Knecht.
“The awareness to what’s going on in the game, the ability to recognize and solve problems as a team is something that we’re going to have to continue to to work on,” Hardy said. “Systems, both offensively and defensively, usually have rules, because it helps keep the order of things on both sides of the ball. But there has to be license to play and to recognize what’s going on around us, and in certain moments say, ‘I don’t care about the rules, this guy’s made four in a row.”
Those who have watched the Jazz closely last season and this season will recognize this trend. Keegan Murray’s career-high 47 points against the Jazz, Donte DiVinvenzo’s nine 3-pointers and 33 points and Fred VanVleet’s 10 3-pointers come to mind pretty quickly. And in those instances, Hardy’s sentiment has been almost exactly the same — the team has to begin to problem solve as a group and be willing to break scheme rules when there is someone with an obvious hot hand.
The problem is that these things take time and the number of young players on the Jazz roster continues to grow. Part of a young player’s development is learning to recognize the moments when they need to just stay right in the face of a player no matter what the principles of a zone say they’re supposed to do.
And this is certainly not just a Cody Williams problem. Frankly, Lauri Markkanen was nowhere near Knecht in the beginning when he was supposed to be and it allowed Knecht to get into a rhythm. Then, by the time Williams messed up a couple of times it was too late for anyone to do anything. A good shooter after seeing the ball go in that many times is going to hit shots even if he’s being face-guarded the entire time. But that’s exactly the issue the Jazz faced. They needed to recognize the personnel on the court and snuff out the issue before it became a problem.
There were certainly moments when Hardy could have called a timeout or changed matchups and lineups. But his philosophy is that the young players aren’t going to learn if they’re taken out of the game every single time they make a mistake.
“So there’s moments where you’re sort of rolling the dice of like, ‘okay I want these guys to feel this moment and to have some recognition, and we’re communicating in a game, and can we fix it on the fly?” Hardy said. “The rolling the dice part is that we might not fix it on the fly tonight. But that’s where we’re at, that’s what we’re doing, and so I can take some of the blame for what happened.”
And of course, there are plenty of nights when there is recognition and the Jazz players see someone hit one or two and they fix the defensive issues before they snowball. Those don’t stick out and nobody remembers those moments as vividly. But everyone will certainly remember the night that Dalton Knecht dropped 37 on the Jazz. Hopefully the Jazz players remember it and learn from this mistake.
