CHICAGO — Though the Utah Jazz picked up their first win of the season Monday night against the Chicago Bulls, they are a team that isn’t going to be favored in many, if any, games that they play this season.
The majority of players that come to the NBA have spent their young lives knowing what it means to be a winner. Most of them were stars in high school, often winning nearly every time they took the court and probably had similar experiences at the collegiate level. That’s what got them to the NBA. But, the transition to an 82-game season at the professional level comes with a number of new and unique challenges, and one of the biggest challenges that young players face when they come to the NBA is learning how to deal with losing on a large scale.
Former Duke standout and Jazz rookie Kyle Filipowski shook his head with a small laugh when asked if he’d ever lost six straight games in his life.
“Never,” he said. “It’s weird. A complete 180 from last year ... Just trying to remind myself there’s 82 games and there’s going to be hot and cold streaks.”
Filipowski went on to say that he’s learning how to find small victories for himself and the team even in losses. When the season first started, it didn’t look like he was going to figure much into the Jazz’s normal rotation, so he’d already been approaching things with the mindset of taking advantage of each opportunity, no matter how small, and trying to find ways to make incremental improvement and celebrate small successes.
With injuries plaguing the Jazz’s roster in the early days of this 2024-25 season, Filipowski has been given more playing time than originally expected, but he has been served well by still approaching every game with that same mindset that he’d been practicing as the season neared. But that’s not a switch that is easy for everyone and is easier said than done.
Being able to have players view wins and losses appropriately and having them understand that improvement can come through losses while also fueling competitive edge is one of the greatest tasks of the Jazz coaching staff and it’s something that head coach Will Hardy thinks a lot about.
“Everybody’s competitive, and the wins and the losses feel good and they hurt,” Hardy said. “We’re never going to be able to get guys to not have an emotional reaction to losing. Honestly, I think if losing goes numb on you, that’s when you have the biggest problem. You want losing to hurt a little bit.”
There’s risk in celebrating moral victories to the point that players are stung by losses. That’s not what Hardy wants for any of the players on the Jazz roster. So there is a delicate balancing act that he and the staff have to play in order to keep their spirits up, to keep them believing in themselves and the process of development while also maintaining good perspective on winning and losing.
“You have to do it in a way where you don’t sugar coat it, where you don’t make them feel like you’re just the staff or the coach or the organization just kind of clapping all the time, like, ‘Hey, good job.’ That goes numb on the guys,” Hardy said. “There’s a balance between telling them the truth — losing hurts and it should hurt — but also that these stylistic things are improving, and if we can keep these things going that way, the wins and the losses will turn in our favor.”
And it’s not just Hardy or the Jazz coaching staff that is trying to provide these philosophical principles for the young players. The Jazz veterans are trying their best to be an example for the young players when it comes to reacting appropriately to wins and losses.
There is a difference between a bad loss and a good loss. Hanging your head and beating yourself up over a competitive game that was played the right way, but ended up in a loss is not something that the veteran players want the young players to do. But if there is a sloppy game, in which the game plan wasn’t followed, and there wasn’t the right amount of effort, the Jazz’s more experienced players don’t want to see the young players too happy or celebrating too much when it’s not deserved.
“I’ve been telling the young guys since day one, it’s hard to win in the NBA. It’s not easy. It’s very, very hard to win,” Colin Sexton said. “You might make a run but they might make an even bigger one. You have to make sure that you’re paying attention to all the details and staying stay locked in in order to win.”
Now that the Jazz have a win under their belts this season, the hope is that the feeling they had when they walked off the court on Monday night helps to reinforce everything else that’s been said and taught and harped on for the last few weeks and that it serves as a prime example of what Hardy is trying to teach this young group of players.
