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NEW YORK — Will Hardy sat in a room in the bowels of the Barclay Center moments after his team's 147-114 loss to the Brooklyn Nets.
"The," he began before immediately pausing. "Is that me?"
Hardy was in the corner of a large room — an echoey corner at that. He had heard his voice bounce back at him and was taken aback. After getting some confirmation that, yes, that room's nook had a pretty sizable echo, he smiled and joked: "I thought I was having a medical event."
Once that was cleared up, he delivered a message — not an especially stern one, but one that, if heeded, could echo through the rest of the season. The message was that the Jazz need to play a certain style to win games.
That style should be one Jazz fans are well aware of at this point. It's the one that's got the Jazz back in the postseason hunt and one that has seen the team turn into one of the better offensive teams in the league.
They pass a lot, make simple reads, and use an unrelenting 10-man rotation to wear teams down. The Jazz found out Monday what happens when they don't do that; it wasn't pretty.
They tried to isolate Mikal Bridges (one of the better perimeter defenders in the NBA) again and again — the results were predictably bad; they failed to take advantage of Lauri Markkanen getting mismatches in the post; they tried to draw fouls instead of just passing to open teammates. It was bad decision after bad decision, missed read after missed read.
"We don't rely on one person to do this; that's not how we're built," Hardy said. "Our approach every day is that this is a team everybody comes in and does their job, and we're going to beat you with our collective strength. I feel like tonight we didn't have that approach."
The result was 17 turnovers, a lot of missed shots, and a 33-point loss. Markkanen had just 13 points and Collin Sexton was 1-of-10 for only 6 points. Those two have been the engine of Utah's high-powered offense; they just couldn't get out of first gear in New York, and the Jazz stalled right along with them.
"I thought we were trying early in the game to take it upon ourselves to make things happen; and when we've played our best basketball, we've just taken what's in front of us," Hardy said. "Shoot when you're open, pass when you're not, try to help our teammates create advantages, and wherever the shots go the shots go."
That style has allowed Utah to cover up its own deficiencies. For the first month of the season, the Jazz looked severely outmatched nearly every night in terms of talent level on the floor. That's completely flipped over the last six weeks.
Sexton has turned into a revelation, Simone Fontecchio and Kris Dunn have been effective starters, Jordan Clarkson has made a surge for NBA Sixth Man of the Year, etc.
There have been good individual performances, but they usually come as a result of the whole team playing as a unit.
"I think that the last month is more of an indication of the type of basketball we can play," Hardy said. "Are we going to shoot the ball great every game? I don't know. Are we going to take care of the ball every game? I don't know. But I think the trends have been much better lately. That doesn't always mean you're going to get the results."
But it means the Jazz have a style and an approach that gives them a puncher's chance every game and against every opponent — as long as they actually play that way.
When they don't … well, that's what happened in Brooklyn.
"Tonight just didn't feel like that," Hardy said. "Like you guys felt that, we felt like it, it just didn't feel like how we've been playing lately. And so I'm excited to get to play tomorrow because win or lose tomorrow, I expect to see a style of play that's far more reflective of our group."
