diff --git a/clients/src/main/java/org/apache/kafka/clients/consumer/internals/AbstractCoordinator.java b/clients/src/main/java/org/apache/kafka/clients/consumer/internals/AbstractCoordinator.java
index 5b9712f34667e..d2c42531c708f 100644
--- a/clients/src/main/java/org/apache/kafka/clients/consumer/internals/AbstractCoordinator.java
+++ b/clients/src/main/java/org/apache/kafka/clients/consumer/internals/AbstractCoordinator.java
@@ -1425,12 +1425,11 @@ public void run() {
                                 // clear the future so that after the backoff, if the hb still sees coordinator unknown in
                                 // the next iteration it will try to re-discover the coordinator in case the main thread cannot
                                 clearFindCoordinatorFuture();
-
-                                // backoff properly
-                                AbstractCoordinator.this.wait(rebalanceConfig.retryBackoffMs);
                             } else {
                                 lookupCoordinator();
                             }
+                            // backoff properly
+                            AbstractCoordinator.this.wait(rebalanceConfig.retryBackoffMs);
                         } else if (heartbeat.sessionTimeoutExpired(now)) {
                             // the session timeout has expired without seeing a successful heartbeat, so we should
                             // probably make sure the coordinator is still healthy.