Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- Jazz coach Will Hardy criticized his team's lack of effort against Memphis.
- Utah was outscored by 38 points in the second half, losing 141-117.
- Hardy emphasized teamwork, urging players to seize opportunities for growth and development.
SALT LAKE CITY — On Tuesday morning, Keyonte George was asked how he wanted to use the final 10 games of the season.
"This is the next 10, not the last 10," he said
The thought was to think of the remaining weeks as a runway — not as a finish line. That sentiment was echoed by head coach Will Hardy earlier in the week when he said he didn't want the team to "give in" over the remaining weeks.
But in the second half against Memphis on Tuesday night, the Jazz certainly looked like a team counting down the days to the end of the season.
Utah was outscored by 38 in the final 24 minutes in a 141-103 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies.
The Jazz lost the third quarter 44-17 — it's worst point-differential quarter of the season — to see a halftime lead quickly turn into a blowout. Utah was 5-of-17 from the field in the quarter and was outrebounded 18-3. Even in a tanking season, it was a shockingly bad performance.
"Yeah, no question," Walker Kessler said. "We got embarrassed."
When Hardy took the dais postgame, he was a bit more harsh in his assessment. His 10-minute presser was a diatribe against his team's effort, approach and just about everything else surrounding the pitiful second half.
"I'm a very competitive person and there are moments where I feel like I'm having to restrain the core of who I am, because there seems to be an unwillingness at times to understand that this is not something that you can take for granted," Hardy said. "The NBA will stop for no one, and our program will stop for nobody."
When asked for specifics about what he didn't like, Hardy was blunt, even likening the intensity of the second half to a random pick-up game at a local gym.
"Pass the mother (he paused to censor himself) ball," he said. "Run back on defense. When it's time to communicate what we're doing on defense, you should do it at a volume louder than I'm talking to you right now. When there is a loose ball, you need to want it more than the other team.
"You are a member of a team," he added. "This is not about you. This is not a personal workout for you. I could go on and on and on, but you get the point. It's a team game. And the moment that you make everything about yourself is the moment that it all goes bad, and it becomes an infection. One person does it, then another person does it."
The Jazz are in an odd position. On the one hand, they are making it clear via long injury reports that they intend to lose as many games as possible. On the other, they expect their young players to turn a blind eye to that and take advantage of an opportunity for increased minutes.
But for the young players like George, Brice Sensabaugh, Cody Williams and the rest of Utah's youngsters, it's crucial to be able to do just that. None of Utah's six recent draftees are blue-chip prospects. Heck, you'd be hard-pressed to project any of them as a sure-fire starter on a winning team at the moment.
Can that change as their games mature? Sure, but it also means they don't have the luxury of going through the motions. The minutes are practically guaranteed now, but they might not be as early as next season.
"I truly think that that's the biggest part of development, is learning how to approach it every day," Hardy said. "When you're lucky to be around the best players, and you see how they are every day like it's not a mistake the best guys are where they are. They have talent, but they also compound that by how they approach it every day. And those are the habits we're trying to build."
He didn't see those habits on display against Memphis, and that — not the fact that Utah took another loss — left him disappointed about his team's performance.
"It's disappointing sometimes when you don't feel like people are pouring into themselves and understanding the opportunity that they have," he said. "I don't pretend to have all the answers. I'm a young coach. I'm still figuring a lot out. But it's my 15th year in the NBA, and I've seen a lot of players make it, and I've seen a lot of guys behave in a way that if they could go back in time, they'd take it back."
