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The ball flew off the rim. His body crashed to the floor. And, on the bench, Alec Burks' teammates smiled.
"I said, 'He's back,'" shooting guard Rodney Hood recalled thinking as he watched Burks rise up late in Friday's win over the Detroit Pistons. "He's back to where he was before — before all the injuries."
The play in question won't make any highlight reels. In the fourth quarter of a blowout victory, Burks cocked back, thinking spectacular, and slammed the ball against the back iron, missing the dunk.
But after missing most of last season and nearly half of this one with injury, the move was meaningful in Burks' progression.
"Maybe it was a good thing," Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. "He went up and had that and landed and was OK. You're going to go through some of that stuff."
It was a hard fall just over a year ago that broke Burks' ankle in the first place. Burks, however, says he won't be deterred from getting to the bucket now, even if it means another fall in the future.
"When I found out my leg was good and steady and stable," Burks said this week, "I knew I was going to be back, as aggressive as I was."
The Jazz would like to see more of that aggression, too.
"I actually like that he tried to finish like that," Snyder said. "I wish he would have finished [an earlier attempt] like that. He double-fluted it and shot on the other side. He doesn't need to be that complicated. … I just like him being definitive and aggressive. It's going to take some time, but it was good to see him out there."
Stuffing the ballot box
Rudy Gobert is a proud Frenchman. But given the state of the all-star voting, you could hardly blame him for the joke he made on Twitter this week.
"Seriously thinking about changing nationality," he wrote.
Gobert says he's getting plenty of votes from his countrymen, but they're nothing compared to the votes Golden State center Zaza Pachulia, a native of Georgia, has tallied. Pachulia's 823,000-plus votes put him second among all frontcourt players in the Western Conference.
Pachulia, however, is highly unlikely to make an all-star team, with the league changing the process this year to give players and media votes along with the fans.
Gobert said he voted for himself and teammate Gordon Hayward on his own ballot. Hayward, meanwhile, said he only voted for his teammates.
"Did I vote for Zaza?" Hayward said. "No."
Odds and ends
Jazz forward Joe Johnson rested Saturday with the Jazz trying to be "proactive managing [their players'] health," Snyder said. "I would anticipate us doing it liberally because we have confidence in our bench." … With three assists Friday, Hayward (1,628) passed Darrell Griffith (1,627) for the ninth most in franchise history. That leaves him just 14,178 behind the Jazz's all-time leader, some guy named John Stockton.
Twitter: @aaronfalk