For the second time in his career, Rodney Hood burnt the Mavericks at the buzzer. Here’s his game-winning three-pointer from Saturday — a stop-and-pop missile with Seth Curry’s hand in his face that put the Jazz up 103-100 with just 0.8 left on the clock.
Rodney Hood hits game winner for Jazz after Mavericks botch final possession
Dallas took a shot way too early and it allowed Hood to win it with a wild three.
Ten months ago in Dallas, Hood did this to the Mavericks.
While that shot only tied the game, the Jazz went on to win in overtime. Both shots are impossibly tough three-pointers — we’ll give the second on a slight edge in degree of difficulty — where the Mavericks really couldn’t have done anything more.
Where the Mavericks could have done more on Friday, though, would have been by running out the clock before attempting the game winner. They could have, but Deron Williams took an open but way-too-early three-pointer, leaving seven seconds for Hood.
Hood’s presence to keep going and hit that shot when his coach didn’t call a timeout is commendable. As for Williams, his decision making doesn’t look any better in the play-by-play — it’s just a shot that happened way too early, didn’t go in and allowed the Jazz to win it on the other end.
Williams was booed by Jazz fans — lingering resentment from the way he left Utah to Brooklyn more than half a decade ago — and maybe that even factored into the shot coming earlier than it should have. Maybe not! Hayward was in the area, but it was a solid look nevertheless. And while many people will say it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the Mavericks to be losing games right now, they certainly were trying to win this one and botched at least a chance at overtime.
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