Houston • James Harden slid to the right in the final minute to get his team a victory. The Jazz slid down the Western Conference leaderboard.
That just about sums up a wild 48 minutes in the Toyota Center on Monday night, as the Jazz came home with a 102-97 loss thanks to a 47-point performance from the league’s reigning MVP.
Harden scored eight points in the game’s final two minutes after the Jazz had tied the game, thanks to an arrangement of 3-point shots. On one play with under a minute left, Harden used his signature step-back move, then added a couple of extra steps at the end, before Ricky Rubio was whistled for a foul behind the 3-point line. The play was the talk of the league after the game.
When asked if he thought the play was a travel, Rubio was coy about the action, saying just “I'm not going to answer, but I think 100 percent of the people know the answer.”
While that play could have been waved off, there’s no denying Harden’s impact on the game overall. Harden’s 47 points came on just 14-of-31 shooting, but he nailed 15-of 16 free throws to push the Rockets offense just past the Jazz’s excellent defense.
The interior defense was excellent throughout the game, led by Gobert: the Jazz allowed the Rockets to shoot just 18 of 45 from the paint all game long.
It was another questionable offensive night for the Jazz, though. At the end of the first half, the team had scored only 37 points, shooting just 30 percent from the field. Once again, the Jazz couldn’t make either threes (20 percent) nor layups (37 percent at the rim) in the game’s opening 24 minutes.
Some of that was due to a changing Rockets team. In response to big losses, like the ones they suffered against Utah in their first two matchups, the team stopped switching as much defensively, instead preferring to let Clint Capela hang out near the rim. The strategy paid off, with Capela getting five blocks and the Rockets forcing 24 turnovers.
“We were just getting burned too many times with our bigs on the perimeter. We just thought we should make the switch,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “When you start something, you catch them by surprise, and then guys figure it out and you have to go to something else.”
“They’re one of the best teams in the league, and we knew they were going to make adjustments after we beat them at home,” Rubio said.
The Jazz did eventually adjust to the Rockets' game plan with a 60-point second half, completely erasing the 13-point halftime deficit in a matter of five minutes and five seconds. The starting unit found success moving the ball to the open corner, and then the Jazz simply — finally — made the open threes.
But Harden and the Rockets responded, pushing the lead back up with a series of and-ones that, combined with a no-call on the other end on Rudy Gobert, led to a technical foul called on Quin Snyder. By the end of the quarter, the Rockets’ lead was pushed back up to 10.
The fourth quarter will be remembered as a real comeback that ultimately became a missed opportunity due to, well, missed opportunities. The Jazz missed four consecutive free throws — two from Joe Ingles, two from Derrick Favors, that, combined with five costly turnovers in the period, gave Harden the chance to take the game over late.
The loss moves the Jazz all the way down to 14th in the Western Conference standings, though thanks to the compressed West, still just 2.5 games separate Utah from a spot in the playoffs.
