The Utah Jazz’s Tuesday night win in San Antonio — a victory they pulled off after trailing by 15 points in the first half — had a lot of good moments.
Arguably the one most talked about, though, was Collin Sexton’s dunk.
Less than a minute into the third quarter, Sexton knocked the ball away from San Antonio’s Devin Vassell. As the ball caromed around a bit, the guard cherry-picked downcourt for an outlet pass, which arrived after Kelly Olynyk gained control of the ball.
From there, Sexton bounce-passed an alley-oop to himself for a 360-degree slam.
“Fast break. I was wide open. So I was just like, ‘Oh well, I’m going to try it.’ Just have some fun,” Sexton explained afterward. “I feel like it was something that sparked some momentum.”
Head coach Will Hardy was somewhat less exuberant and enthused.
Following some opening remarks in his postgame media session, the first question posed to Hardy was about Sexton’s continued growth in efficiency, as exhibited by both scoring 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting and registering six assists against only one turnover.
Hardy concluded his response to that query by saying, “A lot of credit to Collin, because I think he’s maturing as a person and for sure as a player.”
The next question, though, was about Hardy’s reaction to Sexton’s 360 dunk, which apparently caused him to rethink a bit his just-uttered compliment.
He initially grimaced and silently shook his head for four seconds before replying, “Just so many bad words.”
“I, uh … Collin is truly amazing to me. I don’t know why— I think we’re up [six] at the time, with [23.5] minutes left in the game; I don’t know what on earth would make him try that. I also think the fact that he’s 6-foot-1 and pulled that off is wild to me,” Hardy continued. “The look on his face when he landed indicated that he thought it was both awesome and he knew that he was kind of in trouble, like, ‘Oooohhh, I shouldn’t have done that.’ But I still love Collin.”
Perhaps Hardy shouldn’t have been too surprised, though. The team-issued footage from the morning’s shootaround session begins with Sexton performing a 360 dunk off a pass from Lauri Markkanen.
It was practically inevitable at that point.
