The Utah Jazz took one on the chin for their first NBA Cup outing of the season vs. the Phoenix Suns, dropping to their third loss of the year, 96-118, in a game that the Jazz never quite had a hold of from start to finish, especially on the offensive end.
But it wasn’t just a tough early season loss for the Jazz attributed to their inexperienced youth and development process. Instead, for head coach Will Hardy, the results vs. Phoenix came down to simple factors: lackluster effort and intensity– and he was pretty critical of those flaws for his guys post-game.
“The game was decided in the first quarter. I thought our effort and intensity to start the game was pathetic. And I think that we didn’t have enough humility and hunger as a team, in certain moments,” Hardy said after the Jazz’s loss to Phoenix. “Like, the first game of the year warped our brains into us thinking that we’re something that we’re not.”
Oct 29, 2025; Salt Lake City, Utah, USA; Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy looks on during the during the second quarter of the game against the Portland Trail Blazers at Delta Center. Mandatory Credit: Rob Gray-Imagn Images / Rob Gray-Imagn Images
Hardy, now in season four with the Jazz, knows what he has in his roster: a bundle of budding young talents from the past few summers, while unproven, surrounded by some tenured veterans to fill in alongside his All-Star forward in Lauri Markkanen.
But, even when considering those areas in which the Jazz might be lacking, Hardy isn’t making any excuses, especially when honing in on the effort in which wasn’t exactly up to standard in Phoenix for game one of their NBA Cup slate.
“We are a group that is playing a lot of young players. We have a few veteran players sprinkled in. But we have a lot of people who are early in their careers and who are fighting to have careers,” Hardy continued. “We need to have that hunger and humility every single day. And I will poke and prod and dig and sub and flip the team upside down until I find people that want to play hard.”
“That’s my responsibility because the effort in the first quarter, the sloppiness with the ball, we put ourselves in a position where you can’t win. And it’s not OK.”
The Jazz had just 17 points through the first quarter, struggled in the turnover battle with 21 total giveaways and on the offensive end as a whole, and when the intensity isn’t there to keep up with those shortcomings, the night can turn ugly extremely quickly for a young team like Utah.
Which, for a young team facing the steep mountain that is working up to become a top-tier NBA team, is bound to happen over the course of a long and strenuous 82-game campaign.
Oct 29, 2025; Salt Lake City, Utah, USA; Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy watches play against the Portland Trail Blazers during the first quarter at Delta Center. Mandatory Credit: Rob Gray-Imagn Images / Rob Gray-Imagn Images
But in that process that is “development” for the Jazz and Hardy’s crew, there’s also accountability to be had when things aren’t swinging in their direction.
“The word development gets misused a lot. We’re just here to get better every day. That’s not true,” Hardy said. “Every game day, we turn in the group project, and we see where we’re at. And when you step on the floor, you compete to win.”
“There’s going to be a lot of questions asked about, oh, why did this guy play? Because you can’t lose a five-minute segment of the game by 20 points, throwing the ball over the gym, not executing the defense at all, and thinking that that’s OK. This is our profession. This is my profession, and this is their profession. We have to find people who want to compete every single night.”
Hardy hasn’t been afraid to pull out a few notable names from his rotation both in year’s past and already this season if the product isn’t up to par, and that’s exactly what happened against Phoenix.
Kyle Filipowski played just 10 minutes as a starter. Taylor Hendricks and Brice Sensabaugh each had five a piece. On the other hand, we saw high-energy guys like Cody Williams and Elijah Harkless see their opportunity boosted with 15 and 12 minutes off the bench, respectively.
With those rotational decisions, questions are bound to pile up for Hardy based on those choices that might rock the boat of trying to get his young players to develop to their aspired ceiling.
However, for a coach like Hardy, hungry to build a sustainable winner and make the most of the young talent he has in the building, it’s about breaking bad habits and building good ones for the long term. Settling for subpar effort on either side of the ball is simply not in the Jazz’s handbook for development.
“It’s an every night business. And we’re going to continue to stick together. I still love this group. I still love these guys. But it’s my responsibility on game nights to try to find a group of people that’s going to play hard and execute what we want to do on both sides of the ball.”
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