Jazz needed a win like the one they got Wednesday night over the Grizzlies

If the Utah Jazz’s 2023-24 season goes well, they may be able to look back on their Wednesday night, 133-109 win over the Memphis Grizzlies as one of the early points in the season where they saw what could be.

Despite the fact that the Grizzlies are now the only remaining winless team in the NBA — playing without Ja Morant, Steven Adams and Brandon Clarke — and that the Jazz would have likely been the laughing stock of the league if they had let Ziaire Williams, Xavier Tillman and Kenneth Lofton Jr. beat them, the Jazz needed a game like the one they had against Memphis.

Belief

The Jazz have played a tough schedule to start the season, going up against some of the best offensive teams in the league and they’ve had a lot of growing pains, to put it kindly.

Building off of a gritty second half in Denver on Monday (which resulted in a loss to the Nuggets) the Jazz played their best game of the season, even if it came against a team that hasn’t won yet,

“As much as the coaches would like to strip emotion out of the process, emotion is a very real thing and belief is a very real thing,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “I think having a really good result like this, as a team, early in the season, it does help add to the belief. It does help build the trust amongst the group that we are on the right track and that we are capable of playing really good basketball.”

The Jazz improved to 2-3 on the season with the win over the Grizzlies, but had things gone the other way, had the Jazz lost to a team like the Grizzlies and watched the losses continue to mount, it could have made things a lot harder for the coaching staff over the coming days.

With a commanding win, the Jazz now are able to see some light and can better imagine what the team will look like once they build some more familiarity, chemistry and are able to play through their mistakes.

“Until you play really well in a game, on the court, in front of the fans, when it matters, there is that element of doubt, like can we play to that level?” Hardy said. “So yeah, tonight was big. The guys feel good and I hope that they do.”

Collin Sexton’s changing role

Throughout training camp, the preseason and even the first couple games of the regular season, Collin Sexton was part of a group of guards that were sharing point guard duties.

But recently, Hardy and the coaching staff had a conversation with Sexton and told him that they felt like he would have more success if they moved him off the ball a little more and played him in more of a traditional shooting guard role.

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Then, he had his best game of the season on Wednesday night, finishing with a team-high 23 points, shooting 8-of-10 overall and 4-of-6 from 3, to go with six assists and three rebounds.

The thinking behind the change was not difficult to understand. Sexton’s strengths are as a spot-up shooter, as someone who puts pressure on the rim and as a player who can punish the defense with speed. All of that is better utilized if Sexton isn’t also tasked with organizing the offense and making sure to get others involved.

Obviously with Sexton still managing to rack up six assists, this shift doesn’t eliminate his passing ability, it just means that he’s working in the offense differently.

“During the preseason, I put him in a bunch of different spots and that maybe didn’t help him,” Hardy said. “Sorting out what’s best for Collin is part of the mission … and he’s responded really, really well.”

Memphis is down bad

The Grizzlies are in a really bad spot and it’s not likely that things will get much easier for them this season.

They’ll be playing without Morant for the first 25 games of the season as he serves a suspension, Adams had season-ending surgery and Clarke could miss the season after an achilles procedure.

Even when Morant comes back, he won’t be playing with the same team he was last season. There are additions and subtractions across the roster and that’s going to take some getting used to. Additionally, life is not going to be easy for Morant as he faces all the questions, expectations and doubts that have been looming.

There’s a real chance that by the time Morant returns the team could have already played themselves out of the playoffs. That means the Grizzlies, who were arguably the most fun and fast-moving up-and-coming team in the league, could completely miss out on the postseason.

So, why bring this up?

An NBA team is incredibly delicate and the slightest changes can shift everything. But injuries, roster movement and bigger changes are more common than not. It’s important to remember how small success windows are and how difficult it is to have a trajectory that continuously moves upward.