Pacers outlast Jazz and teach a valuable NBA lesson

Another loss for the Utah Jazz, another win for the ever-present tank that continues to slowly crawl across the Jazz’s 2024-25 season.

On Monday night, the Indiana Pacers trailed the Jazz by 12 points midway through the fourth quarter. But experience, talent and grit won out as the Pacers bullied their way to a 112-111 comeback win.

“The margin of error, just as far as defense and offensive rebounding, those type of things,” Jazz rookie Isaiah Collier said after the game. “I think that’s our Achilles heel, right there — giving up offensive rebounds in those late, close-game situations."

Jazz head coach Will Hardy has praised this young Jazz roster for the way that it has competed and been able to keep games pretty close the last few weeks. He continues to emphasize how important, even in losses, it is for the Jazz to feel what it takes to win in the league and believes that close games are one of the best times to experience that feeling.

While every late-game situation and every close game with five minutes left on the clock is completely different, there are general themes that Hardy wants the Jazz to internalize.

One, that physicality is key late in a game. Two, execution and attention to detail is everything. Three, players have to be able to think as a group when the crowd is loud, the game is fast and there aren’t many timeouts or dead ball situations.

And finally, one of the most important things for the Jazz players to learn is to have a short memory and to focus on the greater good.

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“The biggest part is, when we get to the last five minutes of a close game, I don’t care what’s happened before this,” Hardy said. “I don’t care if you’re frustrated. I don’t care about your stats. I don’t care about your feelings. Like, if you’re in your feelings, let me know, and you can sit down, because at the end of the game, we don’t have time for anybody’s feelings.”

That’s not to say that he doesn’t want the players to feel anything. He wants them hungry and wants them to feel the stings of regret after losses and wants them chasing the sweet feelings of victory. But there’s no time to be mad at teammates or to feel entitled to have the ball in your hands or anything like that.

“That’s why they call it winning time,” Hardy said. “We’ve done the hard work to put ourselves in position to have a chance to win the game, and now it all goes out the window, and it’s about executing as a team. But more than that, it’s about competing on every play."

The Pacers punctuated that lesson on Monday night. They were more physical than the Jazz, they punished them for flopping, took advantage of soft defense and made winning, crisp plays to take back the lead and finish the game on top.

Of course, the Jazz don’t have the talent or experience to win a lot of those situations, even if they were doing their best and giving the best effort. But that’s where some self awareness is important. You can live with a loss and feel better about it, if you know you did the right things. But learning what the right things are is a hard lesson that the Jazz continue to work on learning.