Lakers’ last-second shot comes up short in 102-100 loss to Jazz

What seemed on the surface like a blessing, Utah center Rudy Gobert’s missed free throws with 13.1 seconds left in Tuesday night’s game, became a curse in disguise for the young Lakers.

On their final possession, the Lakers tried to run a play that had been designed before Gobert’s free throws — with the expectation that Gobert would make at least one.

When he made neither, point guard D’Angelo Russell tried to run the called play. But the result was a deep, contested three-point attempt that fell short of the rim, only grazing the bottom of the net, and the clock ran out on the Lakers in a 102-100 loss to the Jazz at Staples Center.

The Lakers fell to 12-23 this season, and 0-3 against the Jazz. They have lost 13 of their last 15 games.

“We wanted [Russell] to turn the corner and then there was an option for either him or Lou [Williams] coming off the screen,� Lakers Coach Luke Walton said. “We didn’t get into it with the pace and space and they switched some stuff and we got a little confused. D’Angelo had to end up taking a tough shot. I’ll take that, because I sent that in with Lou when I subbed him in. He’s trying to do the right thing, D’Angelo is, he’s trying to run the play that the coach called. Obviously give him respect for that.�

Said Russell: “We didn’t assume that he was going to miss both free throws. We still got a play up and it came down to us not making shots. That was tough.�

Russell finished with four points on two-for-11 shooting with four assists. Forward Julius Randle led the Lakers with 25 points and 12 rebounds and Williams had 22 points. Jazz forward Gordon Hayward had a game-high 31 points on 10-for-17 shooting, 27 of those points coming in the first three quarters.

Defense has been the Lakers’ great downfall this season. They rank as one of the NBA’s worst defensive teams, and Walton said before the game he’d seen backsliding lately in the defense.

Tuesday’s game showed it’s still a work in progress. The Jazz became the fourth team in the last six games to shoot better than 50% from the field against the Lakers.

But the defense at least gave the Lakers a chance Tuesday, more so than in the rest of their December losses. A bigger issue, perhaps, was their four-for-16 three-point shooting. They shot 47% overall.

“The message is, we had a chance to win because of our defense,� Walton said. “We did not shoot the ball well tonight. . . . If we played defense tonight like we have been and we weren’t making our three-point shots, we lose by 15, 10 points and we don’t even have a chance at the end.�

The Lakers had several chances at the end.

With 32.5 seconds to play and the score tied at 99, the Lakers committed a shot-clock violation, their 16th turnover. At the other end, Utah’s Joe Ingles hit an open three-pointer to give the Jazz a 102-99 lead.

The Lakers countered. Randle, whose consecutive jumpers had given them a 99-97 lead, drove into the paint and was fouled while shooting. The ball rimmed out, and Randle slammed his hand on the court in frustration — a three-point play would’ve tied it. Then he made only one of the two free throws.

Down 102-100, Walton sent Williams into the game with a play to run on the last possession. But first, the Lakers fouled Gobert, a 68% free-throw shooter.

The play Walton called didn’t account for Gobert missing both of those free throws and the Lakers trailing by only two.

“The teaching moment from that is that a [two]-point game, if we have no timeouts, we have our shooting lineup out there, let’s get that floor spaced and look to get downhill,� Walton said. “Make the defense collapse and if they don’t, we don’t need to run that, the play that we had on in a [two]-point game.�

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