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Utah Jazz happy to learn their tough lessons in a win

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Utah Jazz happy to learn their tough lessons in a win


After surviving a 154-148 overtime decision Wednesday against the now 3-31 Pistons, the Utah Jazz acknowledged how lucky they were.

Detroit shot 53.3% overall, made 19 of 41 tries from beyond the arc (46.3%), and buried a game-tying 3 at the regulation horn when Utah neglected to foul Alec Burks as he made his way up the court.

“You’d always rather win lessons after a win than a loss,” coach Will Hardy pointedly noted postgame.

He then rattled off a litany of miscues the team will hopefully learn from next time: breakdowns in coverages; failure to recognize personnel and locate shooters (as evidenced by Bojan Bogdanovic’s 15 3-point attempts); slippage in communication.

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Oh, and that failure of Collin Sexton to foul Burks after Lauri Markkanen made what looked like it’d be a game-winning 3 with 5.2 seconds to go and Detroit out of timeouts.

If the Jazz foul Burks as he races up the court, the game likely ends after 48 minutes. But because they didn’t and he made the shot, an extra five were on tap that could potentially have gone wrong.

Everyone acknowledged that the crazy circumstances of the situation contributed to the breakdown. And everyone conceded they were lucky that it didn’t wind up costing them a win.

“It’s something that we’ve worked on a good amount this year, it’s something that we’ve watched film on,” said Hardy. “But this is also a moment where, when the emotion is super-high and the building is going crazy, it’s easy to lose focus on the strategy part. Obviously, we would have liked to have fouled when Alec Burks ran the ball up the court.

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“… But this is part of learning how to win and learning how to become a really good team,” he added.

The players all took it to heart.

Asked when they realized they should have fouled, Markkanen quipped, “[When we] saw Will jumping on the sidelines. He was trying to yell, obviously, but we can’t hear anything. But we’ve just got to recognize it as players. That’s one big thing we can learn from.”

Sexton noted that he and Jordan Clarkson had a pretty immediate conversation about it.

“Me and JC was looking at it, and I’m like, ‘I should have fouled, right?’ And he was like, ‘No one told you,’” Sexton said. “But it’s all good — those are possessions and things that’s going to help us in the future.”

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Clarkson, who registered a game-high 36 points, including a couple huge buckets down the stretch in the fourth and again in OT, also took responsibility for the miscue.

“In those situations, you know, we’ve all gotta be communicating. And me being next to him in that play, I could have been screaming and telling him,” Clarkson said. “So I’ll take that on myself, just being one of the guys that’s older and has that experience to scream and say that.”

Everyone who spoke postgame acknowledged that it was not a banner effort.

Yes, they tied a franchise-record with their 154 points. No, they couldn’t really enjoy it, because they recognized that Detroit was also scoring at will for pretty much the entire game.

“Obviously it’s fun to score the ball, but I think it just puts a lot of pressure on our offense and execution. Because if we are not getting stops, we know that we have to get a score on the other end so it doesn’t get out of hand,” said Markkanen. “… We’ve definitely got to pick up the 148 part, but we’re happy with the 1-5-4.”

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He then noted Utah’s failure to properly account for the Pistons’ personnel in the game, letting 3-point shooters get off 3s, while chasing others off the line and, in turn, surrendering layups or free throws.

Still, it was Burks’ shot that most stuck with everyone.

Hardy used it as an opportunity to put some of the blame on his own shoulders, pointing out that he wound up second-guessing the information he prioritized conveying to the team in the timeout preceding Markkanen’s go-ahead bucket.

“This is where, as a coach, you always kick yourself: Could I have handled that 60 seconds differently? Could I have drawn our play and talked about multiple defensive scenarios?” Hardy said. “I don’t know. But that’s what I’ll be driving home thinking about. Is there things that I could have communicated better in that moment?”

And again, he gave his players some grace for not executing the situation ideally.

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“It all makes sense in a quiet film room. Like this, if we put the film up behind me right now, it would all make sense,” he said. “But you make a big 3 and there’s four seconds left and the whole building’s going crazy and everybody’s scrambling around trying to find their matchups and figure out what’s happening — those are learning moments for our team.”

The players acknowledged the difficulty of trying to perform perfectly amid such chaos, but the need to nevertheless be better at it.

“Yeah, it’s nothing like the game reps where you can work [it] out in practice; and obviously in the film room, you can pause the video and, ‘We should have done this and this,’” said Markkanen. “We will learn from it, but I think that’s a good experience for us to have in the game, so the next time we know what we should do.”

Sexton concurred.

“We’re gonna be in that same situation, we’ll see it soon — so we’ve got to just be prepared,” he said.

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Yeah, plenty of lessons to be learned.

But they feel a lot better with a 16-19 record than a 15-20 one.



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Wildfire threatens Utah family’s 40-year mule ride business at Grand Canyon

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Wildfire threatens Utah family’s 40-year mule ride business at Grand Canyon


TROPIC, Utah — For over 40 years, Canyon Trail Rides, a family-run business based in southern Utah, has been a beloved fixture at the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.

“I started this business in 1983, and it’s been a really good business,” said company founder Paul Mangum.

Paul began offering mule rides in Zion and Bryce Canyon in 1973, expanding to the North Rim a decade later.

However, on July 4, everything changed when lightning sparked the Dragon Bravo Fire.

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PHOTOS: Historic Grand Canyon lodge, other structures destroyed in wildfire

“The smoke was so thick you could hardly breathe,” said Paul’s son, Tawn Mangum.

On July 11, the Mangums evacuated their mules and staff and shut down operations at the North Rim.

“We take 70 to 80 people a day from May to October, and we’re shut down,” Tawn said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

The fire has burned over 5,700 acres and destroyed dozens of structures — including the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, the only hotel on the North Rim, along with the visitor center and employee housing.

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WATCH: Massive ‘Firenado’ awes, frightens over Deer Creek Fire in southeastern Utah

Massive ‘Firenado’ awes, frightens over Deer Creek Fire in southeastern Utah

It’s the second time the lodge has burned since it was built in 1927; the first fire was a kitchen fire that damaged it in 1932.

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Even though the North Rim sees only 10 percent of the park’s visitors, it’s home for the Mangums.

“I met my wife there, raised our three kids there. It’s our second home,” Tawn said.

With the fire still burning, the future of Canyon Trail Rides at the Grand Canyon’s north rim is uncertain.

“It’s real sad,” Paul said. “What I feel most bad about is my employees, because they’re out of a job now.”





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Golden State Warriors vs Utah Jazz Jul 13, 2025 Game Summary

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Golden State Warriors vs Utah Jazz Jul 13, 2025 Game Summary


Utah

Dr. Kirk Moore ‘completely stunned’ over Attorney General’s decision to drop COVID vaccine scheme charges

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Dr. Kirk Moore ‘completely stunned’ over Attorney General’s decision to drop COVID vaccine scheme charges


SALT LAKE CITY — Saturday morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to dismiss the charges in the case of Dr. Kirk Moore, who was facing charges of running a fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination card scheme out of the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah during the pandemic.

“My initial reaction was, I was just completely stunned. Wasn’t expecting it,” Moore said. “I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do. I don’t think I spoke for a good two and a half minutes.“

The trial came two years after a federal grand jury indicted him, claiming Moore and others destroyed legitimate vaccine doses, distributed fake COVID-19 cards, and administered saline shots to minors.

During the trial, two of Moore’s co-defendants took the stand for the prosecution. One claimed that when she was hired, Moore said her job would be to give out vaccine cards without administering the vaccine. Another claimed people were urged to give donations for the vaccine cards and said she felt like what they were doing was wrong.

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Kathy Nester, Moore’s attorney, spoke to the public on Saturday about the decision.

“The Attorney General’s decision to dismiss all the charges before the trial concluded reflects what the evidence has shown all along: our clients did not commit a crime. They honored the personal medical choices of their patients. They never received a dollar in return, and no unexpired vaccines were ever destroyed,” Nester said.

When asked about his decisions, Moore said he went with what his gut was telling him.

“I just did what was right. I just did what my patients wanted. I talked to them about full informed consent. You can’t have informed consent with people when you don’t know what you’re injecting in them,” Moore said.

FOX 13 News reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for a comment but did not receive a response.

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