Keyonte George had the kind of moment that can flip a game and send a crowd home buzzing. For a split second, it looked like he did exactly that.
With Utah tied at 104 against New Orleans, George rose for a difficult mid-range jumper over Zion Williamson as the horn sounded. The shot dropped, the Jazz reacted like they had stolen one, and the building briefly believed it had a winner. But the officials quickly waved it off after review, ruling that George released the ball just late enough to keep the game alive.
George believed he got it off in time.
“It’s a learning moment,” he said. “You got to go get the ball. Can’t get stuck on the right wing.”
Instead of a celebration, Utah was dragged into overtime and then buried there. The Jazz opened the extra period with a 6-0 burst, with George drilling back-to-back 3-pointers to give them a fast start.
That momentum vanished in a hurry. New Orleans answered with a 14-0 run, and Utah never recovered.
The stretch was ugly in the way only a cold shooting night can be ugly. The Jazz didn’t get much ball movement, settled into rough possessions, and never attempted a shot inside the arc during that run.
New Orleans, for its part, didn’t take a 3-pointer in that span either. Utah kept leaning on the long ball anyway, and the results were brutal.
By the end of the game, the Jazz were 11-for-47 from deep, a 23% night from 3-point range that fit right in with their early-season struggles. Utah now ranks No. 27 in the league at 31.5% from beyond the arc.
Will Hardy said the Jazz are getting chances, even if the shots aren’t falling.
“I think we’ve generated some good looks,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. “The only way to get out of it is to keep shooting good ones.
I think the worst thing we can do is start pressing. We need to trust each other.
We need to trust our teammates. Continue moving the ball to our teammates when they’re open, and trust that they’ll make the right play.”
Hardy also pushed back on the idea that Utah’s shooting numbers tell the full story.
“It’s a long year. Every team faces adversity and every team faces a shooting slump,” he said.
“Ours just happens to be here at the beginning, and so it makes it feel a lot worse than maybe it will feel in two months. So we have to endure these moments.”
George echoed that the Jazz were mostly getting the looks they wanted late, even if the final possessions didn’t end cleanly.
“For the most part, I felt like we got the shots that we wanted,” George said. “There were some times where I was fumbling the ball, not playing in space.
… When I go back and look at it, obviously I am going to beat myself up. I think in those last two minutes and 30 seconds, maybe we could have gotten a better shot, who knows?
“I think for me, for the most part, it felt like our group was engaged all five and we were basically getting the shots we wanted.”
The other problem was on the glass. Utah had trouble handling New Orleans’ physicality around the rim, and the Pelicans’ second chances kept hurting them. Two offensive rebounds turned into buckets for Pelicans guard Jeremiah Fears, and both Hardy and George singled out the rebounding as a major issue in overtime.
“I thought our initial defense was good,” Hardy said. “They had a couple of second-chance baskets.
Fears had one to kind of start off that. We need the secondary players to get those boards.
It’s hard. Guys like [Derik] Queen and Zion put so much pressure on the rim.
“The guys at the rim are sort of locked up physically to contest those balls and we need secondary rebounders.”
What could have been George’s signature night instead became another frustrating entry in Utah’s early-season slide. The Jazz fell to 1-7, and the overtime collapse left them with another loss they’ll have to sit with.
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