SALT LAKE CITY – The way their road trip had transpired, the way the fourth quarter in Utah to wrap it up unfolded, the Pistons fully expected Gordon Hayward’s buzzer-beating bomb to fall and force overtime.
“Maaaan,” Reggie Jackson said, the offensive and defensive catalyst for the 95-92 win that allowed the Pistons to split their four-game trip. “I know you didn’t shoot necessarily well, but big-time player. Definitely confident in himself with the way that they had battled back. They never allowed us to feel like the game was really over. He made a great pump fake. Marcus (Morris) did a great job of getting him off-balance and after he regathered, I was just hoping he didn’t get the ball off in time. Once he got it up … please, don’t go in.”
Morris actually made Danilo Gallinari take an even tougher shot two nights earlier in Denver, draped all over him as Gallinari hit the shot to put the Nuggets ahead for good in the final minute.
“I’ve been in this league five years,” Morris said. “I’ve seen some crazy stuff happen. I was happy that it didn’t (go in), but he got an OK look.”
“I said to our coaches after the game, ‘Can anybody just miss a shot?’ Stan Van Gundy said. “We had Gallinari the other night and then (Rodney) Hood hits the one tonight where we’re way out on him. The best look they had was Hayward and he missed it. So – thank God.”
The common thread throughout the game was smothering defense played by the Pistons after they’d been anywhere from spotty to shoddy over the first three games of the trip, culminating in Denver’s 39-point third quarter on Saturday. Utah did manage to score 33 points in the fourth quarter to elevate its shooting percentage to 40, but even then Van Gundy didn’t think they played poorly.
“Did our defense slip? Maybe a little,” he said. “But Hood started with 11 points in three minutes. Stanley (Johnson) went under one screen, which was a mistake, but the others he’s right with him and he’s just drilling shots. I didn’t think that was bad defense. Still disappointed we gave up 33, but I didn’t think it was bad defense.”
The Pistons managed to withstand Hood’s barrage – he hit 4 of 5 triples in the quarter, the last coming with 6.9 seconds left to pull Utah, which never led, within a point – in large measure because Anthony Tolliver hit three triples and Johnson another big one early in the quarter.
And then Jackson – brilliant with 29 points on 12 of 19 shooting and 3 of 4 from the arc – drained a big triple with 1:08 to play to put the Pistons ahead by six and two free throws after Hood’s triple to finish the scoring.
“He had a hell of a game – and forget the offense,” Van Gundy said. “That is the most consistent effort from start to finish defensively that I’ve ever seen Reggie make since we’ve had him. He got after it on every possession. I’ve never seen him work to that level like he did tonight. So the offense was great, but to see him make that effort defensively … and I thought our team as a whole made that effort defensively. That’s the best effort I’ve seen him make on the defensive end of the floor from start to finish, so really, really proud of him.”
“I was definitely gassed out there on the defensive end,” Jackson said. “But talking to Coach, he didn’t really give us too many options. I didn’t want to be the one to let the team down. I haven’t been playing my best on defenses. I want to be better at that end of the floor. He really called upon me to do so when we sat down, so I wanted to go out there and put out that effort.”
The Pistons had only three other players score in double figures. Power forwards Ersan Ilyasova and Tolliver combined for 28 points, Ilyasova with 16, and hit 6 of 9 from the 3-point line. And Kentavious Caldwell-Pope scored 12, six in the fourth quarter when he made 3 of 3.
Morris struggled, going 1 of 9, but he was almost singly responsible for guarding Hayward, who became even more the focal point of the Jazz offense after starting point guard Raul Neto went out early with concussion-like symptoms and backup Trey Burke shot 0 of 8.
“The ride (home) would’ve been much longer if we’d have taken an L tonight,” Morris said. “We’ve got to continue to build up until the All-Star break.”
“We got stops and were able to get out and get some easy baskets in transition,” Jackson said. “We needed those with the way they surged back at the end. We did a good job tonight.”