Jazz try to come to terms with new reality following loss to Warriors

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SALT LAKE CITY — Frustrated. Disappointed. Defeated.

Those were the feelings in the Utah Jazz locker room Monday following their 129-107 loss to the Golden State Warriors.

It was a tough game — Stephen Curry dropped 15 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter to secure the victory — but it felt bigger than that.

It was only a week ago the Jazz pulled off back-to-back wins over the Milwaukee Bucks and Oklahoma City Thunder, two of the best teams in the league. The Jazz had come together, they were playing well, and they liked each other. The vibes, as they say, were good.

That all feels like a lifetime ago now.

The trade deadline decimated the team's depth, its entire wing position group, and likely any hope of contending for the postseason.

With the win, the Warriors moved a game and a half above the Jazz for the final play-in spot; Golden State has won seven of its last eight games and five in a row after Monday's win. Curry and Co. are trending up, and the Jazz ... are doing the opposite.

And now, it's hard to see a path back to playoff contention. That fact weighed heavy on the players following the loss. A team that had realistic postseason ambitions just last week is now facing a new reality.

The Jazz traded three rotation players and didn't get a single one back in return, a move that clearly showed that the front office doesn't have much interest in competing this year. The moves were made to develop the younger players to see if they could one day be part of the core of the next great Jazz team.

Keyonte George was put back in the starting lineup Monday, and Taylor Hendricks is a full-time rotation player for the first time all season — both rookies struggled in the new roles.

"I felt like it's time," Jazz coach Will Hardy said when asked why George was put in the starting lineup in place of Kris Dunn. "He's a big part of our program."

Growing pains are expected for the youngsters, and eventually, that may very lead to great success down the road. Future hope, though, doesn't often feel good in the present.

"I think it's just about trying to figure it out collectively as a group," Kris Dunn said. "We all gotta buy in. We understand the circumstances that we're in. It's all new; change is hard. And with change, you gotta figure it out. You gotta put the work in, and now get back to the basics."

Change is hard. A bulk of these Jazz players learned that lesson last season at the deadline and re-lived it again last week.

"It's definitely different because those guys played, and losing them, you've got to switch up rotations, but we have to make it work," Walker Kessler said.

Not surprisingly, the Jazz look like a different team. With Kelly Olynyk and Simone Fontecchio gone, Utah lost some of its offensive connectors. That led to a lot of drive-heavy possessions where poor decisions were often made.

The Jazz missed 26 shots in the paint and had some turnovers that were simply head-scratchers. One such example? Talen Horton-Tucker's drive at the end of the third quarter where he missed two open teammates and instead threw the ball right to a Golden State Warriors player, leading to a bucket on the other end at the buzzer.

"We had guys driving on top of guys, and I think because of that there were a lot of tough layups because it's so crowded," Kessler said. "We'll get back to the drawing board and figure it out."

"Back to the drawing board" has been a common phrase over the last few days as the Jazz try to respond to a deadline that left them noticeably weaker and the players frustrated. Dunn, though, tried to spin things in a positive light — or at least as close to one as he could find.

"You should look at it as, like, fun; it's just like figuring out a puzzle, right?" Dunn said. "And that's where we're in right now — just trying to figure out the puzzle to try to get that momentum going, and see if we can run off some wins."

How long will that puzzle take to solve?

"That's the beauty of it, you just never know," he said. "I think we've got a great group — from staff to the team — everybody buying in, everybody's willing to buy in, everybody's willing to put the right work in and we just got to keep playing together.

"Sometimes the losses help you get to where you want to get to."