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SALT LAKE CITY — Keyonte George was quiet.
The Utah Jazz's season-opening loss Wednesday was filled with positives. Walker Kessler was terrific, Lauri Markkanen played at an All-NBA level, Taylor Hendricks looked leaps and bounds more comfortable than his rookie year, Cody Williams showed he could play immediately, etc.
For fans hoping for a high pick— which might be the entire Jazz front office — it was a near-perfect recipe: The team showed growth, kept things interesting and still took a loss. And then there was George.
The second-year point guard went 3-for-18 from the field and even missed four free throws in a night to forget.
"Just got to be better," he said. "Go back to the drawing board (on Thursday). This is when you find out who you are. Obviously, it's the start of the season, but not the outcome we wanted. At the end of the day, it's OK to be mad about stuff like this."
George was visibly frustrated following the game. He was upset about the loss, upset he missed free throws down the stretch and upset he didn't get some calls on drives to the basket.
George has high expectations for himself this season. He wants to be a reason the Jazz accelerate their timeline; on Wednesday, though, his play was one of the biggest factors in the loss. The Jazz got outscored by 11 points in George's 31 minutes.
He passed on potential open 3s in the first half and pressed for midrange looks in an attempt to get himself going. George has rarely been a model of efficiency, trying wild layups, running floaters and pulling up on the move certainly didn't help. Even when he tried to get all the way to the rim, he was searching for contact instead of looking to score, in an attempt to take advantage of the NBA's new point of emphasis.
If a player has established a line on a drive to the basket and that line gets interrupted by a defender, it's considered a foul. He didn't think he got the benefit of the doubt on Wednesday. With the way he was scoring, he probably didn't deserve it, either.
"But just got to play physical," he said. "Don't worry about the refs, no matter how the game is getting called. We're not perfect, the refs aren't perfect, so we got to continue to not put the game in the refs' hands."
It all made for a rough outing for George, but Jazz coach Will Hardy chose to look at what his young point guard did right, focusing on his seven assists to just one turnover.
"I do think that Keyonte's understanding of how we want to play, that showed for me," he said. "His execution, his organization of the team was there. His physical shooting wasn't going tonight, but … I think he made some good choices. I just think there were some kind of loud-looking plays that didn't go his way."
George liked how he hit teammates for lobs — he had one highlight-reel alley-oop to Lauri Markkanen — and how he set up his teammates in general.
"I think I did an OK of getting us organized. But, obviously, like I said, got to be better," George said.
To Hardy, getting his players in the right mindset after a disappointing outing is one of the more interesting parts of his job. It's not a cookie-cutter formula, he said, because each player will respond to different things.
"It's really ultimately about like the team — can we work through the emotion quickly?" he said. "Feeling the emotion is great, but we've got to get to the next thing."
