Will Hardy breaks down final moments of Jazz's crunch-time loss to Magic

SALT LAKE CITY — In the final hours leading up to games, Will Hardy will often find himself browsing through clips of end-of-game situations. He'll watch plays from all-around the league to try and get a feel for what other teams are doing, along with reviewing plays from his own team.

It was a daily occurrence at training camp to run through final plays, and the same can usually be said about practices.

Why?

"That's where you win the game," Lauri Markkanen said.

Or, like what happened Thursday against Orlando, it's where you lose it. The Utah Jazz rallied back from being down by 7 points to take the lead in the final seconds, only to lose to 115-113 at home.

So let's look at those pivotal final moments.

With 19 seconds left, the Delta Center crowd erupted. Markkanen had popped open and drilled an open 3-pointer to give the Jazz a 113-112 lead. His shot capped off an 8-0 run that saw the Jazz go from dead in the water to suddenly one play away from the win.

At the start of the fourth quarter, Hardy told his team to go "win an ugly one." Thursday's game was a physical foul fest filled with turnover after turnover. The Jazz, though, were in position to win one ... until they weren't.

Utah's lead was very short lived. On the ensuing Magic possession, Paolo Banchero immediately drove right on John Collins before stepping into the paint for a short layup. Just like that, the Magic were back up.

The thing that stood out to Hardy about that play: The Jazz needed to force Banchero to his left. There were three Magic players on that side of the court and, therefore, three Jazz defenders. If Banchero is forced to go left, he would have little space to operate on a drive.

"These are little things," Hardy said. "If Banchero misses the shot, I'd still feel the same way."

The good news for the Jazz was that Banchero scored with 14 seconds remaining, meaning the Jazz still had plenty of time for a winning play.

The first option for that play was Collins curling on the baseline, but he was defended well. Once Jordan Clarkson got the inbound pass, the second choice was to hit Markkanen on a lob; that was potentially open, but it would have been a long pass, so Clarkson went to the next option. He swung it around the 3-point line to Talen Horton-Tucker, and then set a screen in order to get it back and attack.

"I think our guys executed well," Hardy said. "I think once Jordan drove it, it looked like his teammates thought he was going to shoot, and so the three guys on the weak side all crashed. Our spacing was gone and Talen was the only outlet at the top."

Horton-Tucker got a clean look, but the shot went long.

The Jazz, though, weren't done just yet. The shot came early enough that Utah was able to foul Orlando with 1.3 seconds left. After Anthony Black split a pair of free throws, the Jazz just needed any bucket to extend the game.

Things ended a bit anticlimactically when Kelly Olynyk's pass to a cutting Keyonte George bounced at his feet, and the game ended in Utah's 20th turnover of the night. The pass was off, but Hardy liked what he saw on the play.

"The pass was thrown a little bit low," Hardy said. "I think the last play was actually executed well. I thought Keyonte was open. I thought Lauri was open on the weak side, and I thought Jordan was coming free at the top. I think Kelly made a good decision, because Keyonte had momentum going towards the basket and, yeah, the ball was just a little bit low."

And that left Utah heartbroken in another loss.

"Sometimes things go wrong, but you still have to be able to execute down the stretch and somehow pull out the win," said Markkanen, who had a team-high 22 points. "We weren't able to do that tonight. We've got to be better, but I thought we had a great chance to win the game."

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