The Jazz are the winningest team in the NBA since Christmas and they’re not satisfied

Since Christmas, one NBA team has stood above the rest with the best winning percentage.

That team has won 12 of the last 14 games, has won six consecutive games after beating the Indiana Pacers on Monday night and are slowly working their way up in the Western Conference standings.

That team is not satisfied and they are going to be practicing on Tuesday despite having back-to-back games on Wednesday and Thursday night.

That team is the Utah Jazz.

“The guys are playing great and I never want to take that away from them,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “But I want them to want more for themselves. I want them to recognize that we can still get better and that there are moments where we can really improve.”

The Jazz are having a ton of fun right now and the vibes are great in the locker room, on the court, off the court and everywhere in between. Hardy knows that this is the moment to double down.

This is when it could be really easy to expect to win games rather than to work for it, or to get a little too relaxed because of how great everything feels.

“My concern at the moment is that we’re on a winning streak, and that is great, but this is the time when you start to have some slippage creep in that gets covered up by winning,” Hardy said.

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It’s not like Hardy is walking into the locker room after the game and admonishing his players for not playing the perfect game. Instead, he tells them that they’re great and that he wants that greatness to continue which is why they need to dig in on the details.

For example, on Monday night, in a wire-to-wire blowout win over the Pacers, there was a point when the Jazz started to get a little careless. They turned the ball over a few times, played a little bit too much iso-ball and just reverted to bad habits.

The good news is that they quickly cleaned things up and closed out the game they right way, but those moments need to be limited and those stretches need to decrease if this Jazz team is going to be able to really compete with the best teams in the league.

And it’s not just Hardy that has this attitude. The players share in the sentiment that things aren’t perfect, despite the recent success.

“Even if we’re winning by a lot, I think it’s the habits that we’ve got to build,” Lauri Markkanen said. “We don’t want to let the game go to a pickup game. Really try and take care of business. We’re trying to get better no matter what the score is, I think that’s the main point.”

So how do the players mentally battle getting complacent? It’s very easy for belief in the team and confidence to lead to relaxation, which would allow for that slippage that Hardy mentioned.

All they have to do is remember what it was like when the season started.

“Remembering when we were losing, I feel like that’s very, very important,” Collin Sexton said. “Remember the times we were losing and how it wasn’t fun in the locker room.”

Right now it’s fun and right now everything is great. And the Jazz want it to stay that way, so it’s time to get back to work.