Three thoughts on the week in Jazz basketball from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Resilience and bouncing back this week

I think one honest conversation has defined this season so far: Keyonte George’s exit interview. He was clear that Will Hardy, Danny Ainge, Justin Zanik and company were pretty harsh on him at the end of last season. The message: If you don’t improve both on and off the court, you will find yourself out of a job.

I think one honest conversation defined this week in Jazz basketball: the one held Monday morning, in between the two Rockets games. The Jazz — and especially George — looked completely abysmal and non-competitive on Sunday.

And so the team used their planned film session on Monday morning between the two games to have a really frank dialogue about what needed to change.

“We had a meeting this morning, and we all agreed that’s not who we want to be, and not the way we represent ourselves or represent fans,” center Jusuf Nurkic said. “People come watch us, and so every game we’ve got to respect that.”

“I was telling these guys, 18 years in, I’ve been on teams where we’re not taken care of like we are here, and to not lose sight of that,” Love said. “… I think that guys took that intention of the conversation that we had this morning as a group and just poured it into the team today.”

They responded with a really terrific game on Monday, probably their best win of the season, against a 13-4 Rockets squad.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George (3) shoots over Houston Rockets forward Kevin Durant (7) as the Utah Jazz host the Houston Rockets, NBA basketball in Salt Lake City on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025.

It’s been a little bit of a trend for the Jazz this season. After a big loss, they’ve come back in their next game and at least been competitive in the next one. Lose to the Thunder by a gazillion, nearly come back and beat the Lakers next game. Lose to the Hornets, of all teams, come back to beat the Celtics. And now this.

A few things are true about this trend. On one hand, if the Jazz want to be a real team, they can’t lose 50% of their games, then follow those up with 50/50 shots of winning. They simply have to show more night-to-night consistency.

But showing character is good, too. This kind of resilience and response will help them as they develop, will help them as they become a playoff team in the future. The 2021-22 Jazz didn’t have this character, for example, and it cost them.

On the other hand, the above strategy is also a way to win more games than the worst teams in the NBA. Right now, the Jazz sit ninth in the tank race. The pick they owe OKC is top-8 protected. Staying with this trend makes it significantly less likely that they become a championship competitive team.

Ah, the catch-22 of Jazz basketball in 2025-26.

2. The limit of offensive rebounding

The Rockets’ offensive rebounding strategy and success rate are really, really interesting.

So they’re offensive rebounding 38.4% of their missed shots this season. Every time they miss a shot, there’s about a 2-in-5 chance they’ll get it back for another one.

That’s a bonkers stat.

Here’s the list of the top offensive rebounding teams in league history. (That’s a sharable link from Stathead, so you should be able to read it even if you don’t have a subscription.)

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz center Jusuf Nurkic (30) defending Houston Rockets center Alperen Sengun (28) as the Utah Jazz host the Houston Rockets, NBA basketball in Salt Lake City on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025.

You have the Rockets at third all-time. The next closest team in this millennium is the 2001-02 Warriors, who come in 66th. But the game has changed a lot in the last decade — the best offensive rebounding team in the 2010s or later comes in 273rd on this list (the 2011-12 Bulls).

How are they doing this? A mix of personnel and strategy. The number one key is Steven Adams, who by himself has a better offensive rebounding percentage than 15 teams in the NBA today. Read that again.

The rest of the Rockets’ lineup is also usually made of really tall long guys: Kevin Durant, Jabari Smith, Amen Thompson. Even Reed Sheppard has always been good at getting loose balls, even though he’s tiny by NBA standards.

So coach Ime Udoka is telling all five guys to crash the glass on every possession.

“We want everybody to go,” he said pregame. “Our first layer of transition defense is to attack the glass and make teams a little bit hesitant to run out.” He reported that when three or more Rockets crash the glass, they get the rebound 70% of the time. 70%! I’m not sure I totally buy it, but wow.

The Jazz, meanwhile, are offensive-rebounding the ball at their own highest rate in the last 20 years — and it’s ranking them seventh in the NBA. Many teams around the league have figured out that getting extra possessions can make up for a lot of sins in shot efficiency (The Athletic’s John Hollinger wrote about that this week), and are applying the strategic pressure.

Will this keep on going up, like the 3-point rate did? Or are we close to an upper limit here? We shall see.

3. The plan with Walker Kessler

I saw Walker Kessler at the Jazz’s practice facility for the first time this week since his shoulder surgery.

Naturally, I was curious: How’s he doing?

“He seems like the same special Walker that he always is,” Will Hardy joked. “His personality doesn’t seem different to me. I know that there’s, for sure, natural frustration of not playing, but I haven’t noticed any type of downturn in terms of his emotions.”

“Walker’s been very engaged. He’s at all of our team events. He’s at practice, he’s in film. He’s here at the games. He’s hearing the messaging to the team,” Hardy continued. “He obviously is watching film on our games. But the biggest priority right now for Walker is to establish his rehab.”

However, he’s not traveling with the Jazz on their road trips right now.

“We’ll address the travel part a little bit further into his rehab. … Similar to Taylor (Hendricks), of course, I want Walker around the team. Rehab can be very isolating, and I don’t think that’s good for Walker. But that’ll be a little bit further down the road as his rehab gets more established.”

Kessler remains one of the Jazz’s building blocks — his ability to recover well from this long-term injury is one of the Jazz’s most important side stories.