Learning curve for Jazz: 2nd-half stumble provides crucial lesson in win over Charlotte

CHARLOTTE — The Utah Jazz were nearly flawless in the first half Saturday in their win over the Charlotte Hornets.

Will Hardy said it was tough to envision his team playing any better, and Lauri Markkanen said it was "up there" when asked if it was the best ball the team had played this season.

That, though, presented Utah a challenge: How do they respond to such a dominant half?

"We didn't," said Markkanen with a slight chuckle as he cut off the question.

As well as the first half was, the second was just about as ugly for the team from Utah.

The Jazz offense that had 25 assists in the first two quarters turned into an isolation slog fest. The turnovers went up, the assists went down and the Jazz allowed 75 second-half points by the Hornets — the ninth most points scored in a half in Hornets history.

Utah's 35-point lead was even cut to 7 in the closing minute of the game.

So how do you keep that same level of intensity going after such a dominant half?

"It's a great question. I think if I knew that answer, every coach would want to talk to me," Hardy said. "Every coach deals with this, every team deals with this. There's the letdown effect when things are going great. Obviously, Charlotte came out of halftime with desperation, and then physicality and intensity because the game wasn't going their way."

At halftime, Hardy said the team talked about that letdown effect, and the players even challenged each other to win the third quarter. But human nature is a hard thing to overcome.

The Jazz had not just won the first half, they dominated it. As Utah grabbed offensive rebounds and passed it around the hapless Hornets, they couldn't help but smile and laugh.

It was easy.

It was the opposite in the second.

In that, there's a lesson for a game the Jazz still managed to win relatively comfortably.

Charlotte forward Washington caught fire after halftime, finishing with a career-high 43 points on 17-on-22 shooting and 7-on-9 from 3-point range. He scored 31 points and hit six 3-pointers in the second half.

"We did a horrible job of recognizing PJ Washington and running him off the line," Hardy said.

And there lies the lesson.

Initially, there was a reason for Washington not getting a ton of attention. Washington came into the night shooting 32% from 3-point range on the season; he's not someone you can ignore completely, but someone who isn't at the top of the scouting report.

Hardy, though, wants his team to understand that can change over the course of a game.

"We're trying to free up our guys to make decisions and understand what's going on in the game because we don't have unlimited timeouts and times that we can talk to the team," Hardy said.

Once the triples started falling, Hardy said his team should have responded. He likened it to a pick-up game — if a player hits three 3s in a row at Lifetime Fitness run, you're gonna start guarding them a bit differently.

"But we seem to have a habit sometimes in pro sports where we get bogged down by a game plan and like following rules and whatever the initial scouting report was," Hardy said. "We've got to be able to adjust in a game and recognize that. Everybody's like, 'Oh, it's statistical variance and it'll come back to the norm.' Yeah, but maybe not tonight. So we need to be able to recognize that somebody has hit three in a row and that we need to guard them differently."

That's not a bad lesson to learn now — in Janruary, and in a win — rather than in a much more meaningful game in the future.

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