The Utah Jazz are learning the hard way that wanting to win again and actually doing it are two very different things.
Monday’s 119-97 loss to the San Antonio Spurs dropped Utah to 1-6, tying the third-worst start in franchise history through seven games. For a team that spent four years rebuilding and came into this season intent on competing again, the opening stretch has been rough. And with patience around the fanbase already thin, the frustration is easy to understand.
The biggest issue hasn’t been one dramatic collapse. It’s been the lack of a full 48-minute performance.
Utah had stretches where it looked organized and competitive, but San Antonio still controlled the game by outscoring the Jazz by 24 points across two quarters. The Jazz won the second and fourth quarters by a combined four points, but that wasn’t nearly enough to offset the damage elsewhere.
Injuries to big men Jaren Jackson and Jusuf Nurkic have mattered, but the broader problem has been consistency. This group keeps showing flashes, then losing them.
One night it’s turnovers. Another night it’s fouls.
On Monday, the Jazz posted season lows with just 11 turnovers and 17 fouls committed, which at least gave coach Will Hardy something to point to. But the shooting never came around, and Utah finished at 35% from the field.
“Understanding who we’re playing and what each game presents,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said after the game. “There’s execution that’s needed, and sometimes that means doing boring things over and over again in order to generate good shots. You know, we can’t get tired of doing the simple things.
“I believe so much in our team and in our program. I know the work that’s going into it. I see things translating onto the court that have been worked on a ton in practice, and we have to be able to sustain that execution for 48 minutes.”
That’s the tension with this team right now. There are signs of progress, but they keep getting buried by the next problem. After years of losing, learning how to win is proving to be its own challenge.
Only five players on the roster have playoff experience, and two of them - Nurkic and Jackson - aren’t playing right now. Hardy has spent the early part of the season trying to prepare his group for the reality that there would be bumps along the way, but the players are still feeling the sting when those bumps turn into losses.
According to Keyonte George, Hardy told the team before the season, “Prepare like you deserve to win.”
“You kind of sit back and try to figure out what does that mean?” George told The Salt Lake Tribune last week. “Once you start to realize the little communication that we have at shootaround, that’s feeling like we deserve to win - watching film, watching the guards’ one-on-one tendencies, knowing some of the team’s top plays.
“I think those are things that fall into the category of feeling like we deserve to win rather than I’m just good at basketball and we can go up-and-down the floor, and we should win. No, it’s a difference between we should win and we deserve to win.”
That distinction has been obvious so far. The Jazz haven’t reached the point where they’re doing enough to deserve the result, and they haven’t found the kind of rhythm that makes winning feel inevitable.
Still, the mood in the locker room after Monday’s loss wasn’t one of despair. The players believe the turnaround is coming, and they’re not treating seven games as a final verdict. They think one solid night - one game with 48 minutes of steady basketball - could be enough to get things moving.
Brice Sensabaugh is among those holding onto that belief.
“I feel like we’re playing good basketball; we just got to find it for longer stretches,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “It’s going to click.
It happens for every team. It clicks.
We just got to keep working and keep chipping away until we find that.
“You see it a lot, like the Knicks last year - they took it all the way to a championship. For some teams, like the team we just played, they got it a couple of years ago, and it’s been flowing ever since. We just got to keep fighting.”
In Other News...
Jazz Cannot Let This Start Force A Lauri Panic Move
A 1-6 start has the Jazz looking up at the rest of the Western Conference, and it has also revived the familiar chatter around Lauri Markkanen. Utah has been poor in several statistical categories, and when a team is off to this kind of beginning, the temptation is to look for a fast fix. Markkanen has not been at his usual level early on, but his blend of size, skill and experience still gives the Jazz something they do not have much of elsewhere on the roster.
That is why a panic move would be so risky. Trading Markkanen now would not automatically solve Utahs problems, and it could easily strip away one of the few established pieces the front office can still build around. The Jazz need better play across the board, not a rushed decision driven by a bad week or two, and keeping Markkanen in place still looks like the more sensible path for a team that is trying to find its footing. [Read more 🡒]