Favors’ last-second dunk could give Jazz inside track for playoffs
Two weeks ago, the Utah Jazz were 29-35 and trending downward, having lost seven of eight and posted the NBA’s second worst offense since the All-Star break to fall three games out behind the Houston Rockets for the West’s eighth and final playoff spot. Now, though, Utah’s got a new lease on life, thanks in part to a timely bit of pick-and-roll execution by two of its rising stars.
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After James Harden set up Dwight Howard for a dunk that tied Wednesday’s matchup between the Jazz and Houston Rockets at 87 with just 22 seconds remaining in regulation, Utah coach Quin Snyder elected not to call a timeout, preferring to let his charges work against an unsettled Rockets defense. Swingman Rodney Hood worked the clock and kept an aggressive Harden at bay until wing partner Gordon Hayward streaked over to set a screen that could get the southpaw moving toward both his dominant hand and the middle of the floor.
Hayward succeeded, both keeping his man, Rockets forward Trevor Ariza, from getting a clean release to track Hood off the pick (through what appeared to be a grab of Ariza’s right arm) and impeding Harden’s progress enough to keep him from getting back into the play. As a result, Hood was able to turn the corner and get moving downhill toward the Rockets’ basket, putting Howard in an unenviable position. Either he steps up to cut off Hood’s penetration, thus leaving behind his man, Derrick Favors, for Houston’s guards to pick up on a help rotation, or he hangs back to check Favors and protect the rim, but risks giving up a short runner for the win.
Howard chose the former. Hood drew him out just far enough to get Favors wide open, then dumped the ball off. Favors, who had positioned himself right along the boundary and nearly under the Rockets’ basket, was able to catch and go up right away, before either of Howard’s hoped-for helpers, guards Jason Terry and Patrick Beverley, could bother him. Favors slammed it home, giving Utah an 89-87 lead with 1.6 seconds remaining, and forcing Houston to take its final timeout.
The Rockets had one more shot at a winner, and it actually wound up being a pretty good one …
… but after getting enough separation from Hayward to cleanly catch the inbounds, Harden’s attempt at a game-winning 3-pointer — contested pretty well by Hayward and inbounds defender Trevor Booker — found the heel of the rim and bounced clear, giving Utah the two-point win.
The drive, draw and dish was the highlight of an otherwise disappointing night for Hood, who missed nine of his 11 shots and finished with seven points, five rebounds, four assists and a steal in 37 1/2 minutes. And yet, even as he struggled with his shot, he refused to let outside, um, distractions get to him:
… and proved once again on that critical final Utah possession that he’s capable of performing under pressure.
“I don’t think I could’ve played any worse,” Hood said, according to Tony Jones of the Salt Lake Tribune. “But it’s all about making winning plays at the end of the game.”
In their locker room, though, the Rockets lamented what they viewed as a missed call on that “winning play.”
JBB said Favors stepped out of bounds on the go-ahead dunk.
— Calvin Watkins (@calvinwatkins) March 24, 2016
Terry immediately pointed to baseline to argue Favors was out of bounds. He was, but defensive breakdown as much to blame, Bickerstaff said.
— Jonathan Feigen (@Jonathan_Feigen) March 24, 2016
Your perspective on the “clarity” of Favors’ heel placement likely depends on your rooting interests. For what it’s worth, I thought Favors looked like he was out on the catch as I watched live, but on the replay, it looked to me like his heel was above the baseline rather than over it on the ground. On a bang-bang play like that, you can understand the ref not making a call, and Jazz fans who still remember Houston getting the benefit of a silent whistle when Harden and Montrezl Harrell hammered Jeff Withey on a late-game dunk attempt during a Rockets win back in January will likely view Favors’ counted basket as a make-up no-call, anyway.
The Hood-to-Favors flush completed a killer comeback that saw Utah climb out of an 18-point second-quarter hole and overcome 23 turnovers that led to 23 Rockets points. After shooting just 30.8 percent from the floor in the first half and managing only 13 points in the second quarter, the Jazz found their footing after intermission.
Hayward (15 of his team-high 22 points after halftime) and point guard Shelvin Mack (13 of his 16, including a big game-tying 3 in the final minute) carried the offensive load while Favors and reserve big man Trevor Booker, to whom Snyder turned late instead of shot-blocker Rudy Gobert, cleaned the glass and protected the paint. Small-ball (or smaller-ball, anyway) lineups without Gobert outscored Houston by 16 points in just under 25 minutes of floor time on Wednesday, tilting the game in Utah’s favor at the right time and enabling the Jazz to escape Toyota Center with their sixth win in seven games.
“We as a team, we just made the plays in the second half,” Hayward said after the game, according to Tony Jones of the Salt Lake Tribune. “We didn’t play very well in the first half, but guys stepped up when they needed to and made big shots. We all rebounded, we got steals, and it was a great win because of that.”
And, of course, because of what else it got Utah.
With the win, the Jazz improved to 35-36; with the loss, Houston dropped to 35-37. That means Utah now sits in sole possession of eighth place in the West, a half-game ahead of Houston in the race for the conference’s final playoff berth. The win also earned Utah a split of the four-game regular-season series between the two teams, meaning the Jazz will no longer lose the first tiebreaker should the two teams finish with the same record. (As it stands, though, they’d lose the third, which is record within one’s own division, and fourth, record within the conference.)
And since the Jazz have a game in hand and an easier closing schedule than the Rockets, and since the Dallas Mavericks are still reeling from the revelation that Chandler Parsons will miss the rest of the season, the win gave their postseason odds a real boost; after Wednesday’s win, FiveThirtyEight’s prediction model has the likelihood of the Jazz making the playoffs at 90 percent.
Houston, on the other hand, saw its odds drop to 71 percent — again, the likelihood of the wounded Mavs dropping out after losing of eight of their last 10, including a Wednesday defeat at the hands of the sixth-seeded Portland Trail Blazers, and one of their best players means there’s probably another spot open — and watched an opportunity to move into seventh place morph into one of the more dispiriting losses of a season full of them.
Patrick Beverley slammed a cabinet door in his locker and yelled “F***!”
— Calvin Watkins (@calvinwatkins) March 24, 2016
The Rockets lost despite getting a pretty tremendous performance from Harden, who popped for 26 points with 10 assists, eight steals and seven rebounds in 42 minutes despite playing in the second game of a back-to-back on a sprained left ankle:
For the second straight night, though, a strong performance by Harden wasn’t enough to avoid a final-seconds defeat. Houston has now lost three in a row and five of its last seven, and the road doesn’t figure to get any easier, as the next two weeks will see the Rockets take on both top-flight competition (the Toronto Raptors, Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder) and teams who, like the Rockets, are fighting for their postseason lives (the Indiana Pacers, Chicago Bulls and Mavericks).
“The season’s not over,” Rockets interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff said, according to Kristie Rieken of The Associated Press. “We’re in a position where, we take care of business we can still get into the playoffs. But we’ve got to take care of business.”
On consecutive nights, with the game on the line, Houston couldn’t do that. On Wednesday, Utah could, and that’s why the Jazz left Texas with the win, the eighth seed and what could be a pivotal leg up in the race for their first playoff trip in four seasons.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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