George and head coach Will Hardy explain the game’s ending.

(Tyler Tate | AP) Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George (3) takes the final shot of the game defended by Los Angeles Lakers forward Maxi Kleber (14) as the Jazz attempted to tie the game and send to overtime during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, Nov. 23, 2025, in Salt Lake City.

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as the saying goes — but the Utah Jazz were close to a win on Sunday night against Luka Doncic, LeBron James, and the Los Angeles Lakers.

Down 11 with three minutes left, the Jazz stormed back to get action to one game-deciding play. Lauri Markkanen, shooting cold for most of the game, hit a 3-pointer before missing a fadeaway with 7 seconds left. Then, with the chance to push the Lakers’ lead to three, Luka Doncic missed one of two free throws to give the Jazz a potential game-winning shot.

Last possession of the game, Keyonte George gets pushed to the ground by Marcus Smart trying to go around the screen

Lakers might have gotten away with one pic.twitter.com/wPousvNl1f

— Jazz Lead (@JazzLead) November 24, 2025

The play failed, though, as Keyonte George fell to the floor, got the ball back, and forced a very tough look from the corner.

Naturally, questions arose about the play’s execution.

First, did George get fouled by Marcus Smart there?

“It appeared to me that Keyonte got fouled before the ball came in. That’s not how it went,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. That was probably a more polite version of his message to referees at half-court, where Hardy walked onto the court to confront them after the game.

George, for his part, sidestepped criticizing the refs.

“At the end of the day, you don’t want to put the game in the ref’s hands. There’s a lot of things in the first half that we could have controlled, and you saw the second half where we made a push,” George said. “So if we put two halves together, we don’t put ourselves in that situation at all.”

Smart, meanwhile, told Lakers reporters that he “got to the body, and he tried to draw a foul. A smart play, trying to draw the foul and get the free throw and the ball. … The officials let us play, that’s it.”

Furthermore, once the play was so chaotic, why didn’t Hardy use a timeout?

“We had an extra time out. It’s loud. I yelled ‘timeout’ twice while the ball was in,” Hardy said. “But once it was in, Keyonte got it and shot it. Like, it just is what it is, that happened in 2.2 seconds.”

Fans of both teams may remember a Jazz-Lakers contest that happened just under one year ago. In that game, Hardy called a timeout because he felt the play was stopped — it actually wasn’t, and his timeout meant a Collin Sexton game-winning shot was wiped away.

Still, the overall feeling in the Jazz’s locker room after the game was positive, reflecting the team’s comeback rather than one play gone wrong.

“We ain’t scared of nobody. I try to tell the guys all the time, like, we’re in the NBA too,” George said. “We get to play multiple guys that people talk about on television and in the media, and we get a chance to compete, and put ourselves out there.”