Utah Jazz beat East-leading Detroit Pistons, led by Lauri Markkanen and Keyonte George

It’s not hard for Keyonte George to imagine what the Delta Center crowd would be like during a playoff series.

“I think about it all the time,” he said. “I go back to a specific game — we were playing OKC my rookie year, made a couple shots down the stretch and I couldn’t even hear (head coach) Will (Hardy) talking to me face-to-face.

“They show up every single night. It almost feels like a college atmosphere. Whenever it gets that loud, it’s fun. You feel the ground shaking.”

That’s what the fans were like on Friday night as the Utah Jazz beat the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons, 131-129.

It was a statement game from this Jazz team. The message is despite their record and a roster that is very likely to change dramatically before the team is ready to really contend, that a core is forming and it is led by Lauri Markkanen and Keyonte George.

And it’s not just that Markkanen and George are great scorers or that they are proving that they would be hard to replace. It’s more about how they’ve embraced the style of play Hardy is trying to establish in Utah — a style that favors advantage over everything.

“It speaks to this team that they are recognizing each other’s strengths,” Hardy said. “When Brice (Sensabaugh) is open, we’re trying to get him a shot. When (Jusuf Nurkić) has a seal against the small, we’re trying to get him the ball.

“I think our team is doing a good job of of seeing it right now, and it creates a lot of really good momentum in the locker room because ...we don’t create this weird anxiety about, like, ‘I haven’t touched (the ball) in a while.’"

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The players are more willing to play to the advantage and move the ball, knowing that on any possession they create an advantage for a great shot, the ball will find them.

There’s comfort for not just the players but the front office as well, understanding that there are players on this team who have adapted and improved in a way that will work even if there is roster change, because any new player the Jazz bring in will be expected to play the same way, which serves everyone.

It doesn’t hurt that against the team with the second-best defensive rating in the NBA (the Pistons), George and Markkanen combined for 61 points.

Both are finding more ways to make teams pay for deficient coverage and are playing off one another to exploit weaknesses in defenses.

Markkanen finished with 30 points, four assists, four rebounds and went a perfect 10 of 10 from the free throw line. George, who had a huge steal with a minute left in the game and then made the game-winning bucket with just 2.1 seconds left, finished with 31 points, eight assists and seven rebounds.

“We put Keyonte and Lauri at the top and let them play,” Hardy said of the last play. “It’s something we’ve been doing a bunch of this year. It’s something they work on a lot, and Keyonte came up with a big one.”

The crowd went crazy. They’d been standing in unison since George’s steal and dunk with 1:14 left on the game clock. The din after George hit the go-ahead bucket was reminiscent of a playoff game.

“We really appreciate the love and support that they give us every night,” Hardy said. “It’s pretty loud in here for the playoffs. I’m pretty sure when I was in San Antonio, we played Utah in the playoffs one year. I can’t wait to hear that sound.”