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SALT LAKE CITY — Friday’s game started out being about Mike Conley. It ended up in controversy.
With 2.8 seconds left in the Jazz's game against the Grizzlies in Memphis, with Utah trailing by one, Donovan Mitchell caught the ball as he was going away from the basket. As he turned, ready to fire for a potential game-winning shot, Solomon Hill swiped down and knocked the ball away. The problem: It sure looked like he got Mitchell’s arm.
No call. Game over. Memphis 107, Utah 106.
That didn’t sit well with Mitchell.
"There's really not much else to it,” Mitchell said. “They obviously defended it well, but they hit my whole arm. It's the third time this has happened in 12 games at the end of a game and I haven't gotten a foul call, which is at this point, ridiculous.
"There's not much else to say besides that,” he continued. “My teammates trust me in these positions. It happened against Sac. It happened against Milwaukee — ... Bojan (Bogdanovic) hit the shot against Milwaukee.
"Like there comes a point in time where they're going to release the thing that says I got fouled, but it's too late. It's the third time in 12 games. It's annoying. I don't know what they were looking at. At the end of the day, it was a foul."
Since it was a no-call, the play wasn’t challengeable. The clock ran out and the Jazz lost.
“It's hard to tell,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “Obviously, it's a no-call, so you can't challenge it; just one of those things. You can point to a last play, or a singular play or whatever it may be, but there were enough plays for us in the game that were in our control that I think we can be better and weren't able to overcome that.”
Snyder took a more diplomatic approach. And while it’s true that Mitchell probably should have been headed to the free-throw line (where he was 10 of 10) with a chance to win the game, that wasn’t the only thing that cost the Jazz the game.
Memphis had 56 points in the paint with Ja Morant being a big reason for that. The rookie showed some sensational ball control as he penetrated and collapsed the defense on his way to 22 points and eight assists.
Utah (8-4) especially struggled whenever Rudy Gobert wasn’t on the court. In a one-point loss, the Jazz outscored the Grizzlies by 10 when Gobert was on the floor.
Gobert had 23 points on 9-of-11 shooting and had 17 rebounds — and his defense in the third quarter helped claw the Jazz back in the game. The Jazz gave up an early nine-point first-half lead to trail by as many as 11 in the second quarter before coming back.
The Jazz shot 40.6% and were just 9 of 34 from 3. Snyder said he liked the shots that his team got, but they just didn’t fall.
The Jazz had one 3 taken off the board after Jeff Green’s heel was deemed to be out of bounds — a turn of events that Snyder said was “deflating.”
“We gave ourselves plenty of chances to win,” Conley said. “I think we played a solid game for the most part. And we didn’t make a lot of shots.”
The last play and the loss ended up overshadowing Conley’s return to Memphis. The night started with a standing ovation for him during introductions and there was a tribute video played for him during a timeout.
It was far from the perfect homecoming for Conley. He had 15 points on 5-of-19 shooting. He had one shining sequence where he scored six straight in the fourth quarter to give the Jazz the lead. That lead, though, wouldn’t last.
Mitchell finished with 29 points, nine rebounds and five assists. But it was the free throws that he didn’t get that lingered at the end.
"I put the ball out there, and he hit my whole wrist and it's a no-call. At least call it, they can challenge it and get it right. It's annoying,” Mitchell said.
