Indiana Pacers surpass the Utah Jazz and teaches a valuable NBA lesson – Deset News

Another loss for Utah Jazz, another victory for the ever-present tank that continues to slowly crawl over Jazz’s season 2024-25.

On Monday night, the Indiana Pacers jazzed with 12 points midway through the fourth quarter. But experience, talent and grit won when Pacers bullied himself to a 112-111 comeback victory.

“The margin of error, as far as defense and offensive rebounding, the type of thing,” said Jazz -Rookie Isaiah Collier after the match. “I think it’s our Achilles heel, right there-abandoning offensive rebounds in the late, close game situations.”

Jazz Head coach Will Hardy has praised this young jazz list for the way it has competed and been able to keep games pretty close to the past few weeks. He continues to emphasize how important, even in loss, is for jazz to feel what it takes to win in the league and think close games are one of the best times to experience that feeling.

While each late game situation and each close game with five minutes left on the clock is completely different, there are general themes that Hardy wants jazz to internalize.

One, the physical is the key late in a game. Two, execution and attention for details is everything. Three players should be able to think like a group when the amount is high, the game is fast and there are not many timeouts or dead ball situations.

And in the end, one of the most important things for the jazz players is to learn how to have a short memory and to focus on the bigger good.

“The biggest part is when we get to the last five minutes of a close game, I don’t care what happened before this,” Hardy said. “I don’t care if you’re frustrated. I don’t care about your statistics. I don’t care about your feelings. If you are in your feelings, let me know and you can sit down, because at the end of the game we don’t have time for anyone’s feelings. “

That is not to say that he does not want the players to feel anything. He wants them hungry and wants them to feel stings of regrets after loss and wish they chase the sweet feelings of victory. But there is no time to be angry with teammates or to feel entitled to have the ball in your hands or something similar.

“That’s why they call the winning time,” Hardy said. “We have done the hard work of enabling ourselves to have a chance to win the game, and now it all goes out the window and it’s about performing as a team. But more than it is about competing for every game.”

Pacers punctured that lesson Monday night. They were more physical than the jazz, they punished them for flop, utilized soft defense and got winning, crispy plays to take the lead and finish the game on top.

Of course, the jazz does not have the talent or experience to win a lot of these situations, even if they did their best and gave the best effort. But this is where some self -awareness is important. You can live with a loss and feel better at it if you know you were doing the right things. But learning what the right things are is a tough lesson that jazz continues to work on learning.