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SALT LAKE CITY — The Jazz were 11 seconds away from suffering one of the worst months in their team's history.
The Jazz had one win over arguably the worst team in the league this month. The Orlando Magic are one of the few teams with a worse record than the Jazz. On their home court, the Jazz found themselves down late and tried to stretch the game for one play to get a win.
Marvin Williams grabbed a missed Arron Afflalo free throw when the Jazz were down two and the Jazz needed to go. Tyrone Corbin had used all their timeouts to set up previous plays, so the Jazz had to grab the rebound and run.
There wasn't enough time to call a play, the Jazz just had to run what they had practiced with Gordon Hayward taking the ball down the court. Just like in practice, Hayward went to the rim to try to tie the game while Trey Burke, without the ball, spread the court and found himself in the corner.
“I knew I had to get it down the court pretty quickly so we could get a shot, get a chance for an offensive rebound if we missed,” Hayward said. “Just got a good screen, got to the hole and saw Trey drifting to the corner.”
A two would tie it, a three would win. Hayward took a pick-and-roll and had a look at the rim, but saw Burke sitting by himself and the Jazz went for the win.
Burke and the team had practiced this similar situation. What to do when one or the other player takes the ball. Burke would slide to a corner to get into position in case the driving Hayward didn't have a good path to the bucket.
“We work on that a lot in practice,” Burke said. “We get a lot of those looks in the game as well. Either if it's me driving baseline finding him or vice versa and he found me tonight and it was my job to make the shot.”
Burke drifted to the corner, Hayward's vision and passing ability got him the ball. Burke has that clutch gene if you will that allows him to make big shots when he needs to. The ball went down and the Jazz were able to win by one and stop a bad slide in March, where they were 1-10.
Especially in March, these two make plays. It's gone on since their own runs in March.
Both players made their marks in March. Hayward took the Butler Bulldogs to the final game and Burke took Michigan there as well. Both were the leaders of their teams and constantly made plays for their schools that put them on the map to be drafted by the Jazz.
Hayward laughed about it being just another day in March.
“March Madness, I guess, March. Sometimes shots fall for you, sometimes they don't,” Burke said. “Tonight they did.”
Last year at this time, Burke was pushing his college team deep in the tournament, helping him move up the draft boards. The game changes from college to pro, but for Burke and Hayward, it's just making a play.
“Just trying to make a play, what a shot by Trey,” Hayward said.
Of course the game didn't end with that shot. There was just under two seconds left, and the Magic moved the ball down the court, then the third young building block, the defensive presence of Derrick Favors, left his mark on the game.
Favors had the greatest gaffe of the game earlier when he threw the ball right to Afflalo, who then tied the game and led to the Magic taking the lead. However, when the Jazz needed some defensive help, Favors made it happen.
The Magic were inbounding the ball and Favors knew the ball would go to the post and he made a play to knock the ball out of bounds and effectively end the game.
The separation between a win and a loss is very small. A loss could have shattered any remaining confidence for this year and maybe years to come. Fortunately, the plays were made and the shot went down.
