Anatomy of a comeback: Building the bridge to late-game heroics

Keldon Johnson sealed the Spurs' 102-94 victory over the Jazz on Tuesday, but it was a pair of rookies who gave San Antonio the life it needed.

Photo courtesy of Bally Sports Southwest

Keldon Johnson had been waiting a long time to get another crack at closing a game. For a team that’s played the second-fewest “clutch” minutes in the NBA this season, those opportunities haven’t come around often, and he was pining for the moment.

“He was on me all night,” Gregg Popovich said of his star’s insistence on taking the shots when they mattered most. “He put it away in the end. We put him in a couple of pick-and-rolls, and he came through.”

Johnson went 4-for-4 from the floor in the final three minutes of the Spurs’ 102-94 comeback win over the Jazz on Tuesday, about a month removed from failing to convert on two chances in the closing moments of regulation during an eventual 128-118 overtime loss to the Phoenix Suns in late January. But in Utah, he made the tough shots, and in doing so helped San Antonio end its franchise-worst 16-game losing skid.

Still, while that night’s hero got the attention he deserved, it was the others — the young support system the Spurs have asked so much of all season — whose dirty work made those final minutes relevant.

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Jeremy Sochan had contributed next to nothing in the box score prior to checking back into the game with 3:17 remaining in the third quarter. In a little more than 13 minutes played to that point, the Swiss Army Knife rookie had just two points, one rebound and an assist, and his impact on the offensive end had been largely negligible.

Just a couple of nights after posting only 14 points in the third quarter against this same Jazz team, the Spurs had seemingly fallen into the same trap. They’d managed just 10 points in the third period before Sochan’s re-entry, the ball wasn’t zipping around the way Gregg Popovich always prefers, there was very little legitimate pressure being put on Walker Kessler and Co. around the rim, and every single shot seemed to be contested.

Every. Single. One. San Antonio was playing basketball like it was a chore to do so.

But somehow, during a contest that lacked any semblance of fluidity and energy, Sochan returned to the floor like he was shot out of a cannon. Over the next seven minutes of game time, San Antonio turned a 68-60 deficit into an 88-82 lead, and he was the engine that jump-started the whole run ahead of Johnson’s late heroics in Salt Lake City.

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