Keyonte George did not start off his second season with the Utah Jazz too great. In fact, it was about as bad as anyone could expect from the NBA sophomore. In the Jazz's first sex games, he averaged 13.7 points while shooting 30.3% from the field and 30% from three, per NBA.com.
His assist average went up in that time, averaging 6.5 dimes a game, but that has also come with 3.7 turnovers. There were going to be some growing pains for George, but his start was about as bad as it got. But then, the Jazz faced off against the Bulls.
In their first win of the season, the second-year Jazzman finally broke out, putting up 33 points and nine assists. In short, this is the Keyonte George every night.
So what snapped him out of it? George gave the full details to Deseret News' Sarah Todd on how Will Hardy got him over the hump.
How Hardy helped George mentally
Todd detailed how Hardy approached George in light of his lackluster play to start the 2024-25 season.
"As Hardy watched the young guard beat himself up over every mistake and every missed shot, he asked George what he would say to a teammate that was going through a slump?
"Clearly, George would never tell a teammate to hang their head and be ashamed. He would tell a teammate to keep shooting, to believe in the work being done every day, and to shake off anything that goes wrong. Move onto the next play. Hardy told George to take his own advice and to talk to himself the same way he would speak to a teammate."
According to George, Hardy asked him something else that helped him get through it.
“He asked me if I had a dog and I told him, yes,” George told Todd. “I’m going to go home tonight and my dog ain’t gonna care if we lost. I mean, he’s just happy to see me. Tail gonna be wagging, he’s gonna want to go outside. That kind of puts you back in a place where, you know, we obviously want to come out here and win, this our profession. But the game is 48 minutes, and there’s 24 hours in a day. So we can’t let this 48 minutes destroy what we want to do outside of it. So, he’s helping me put things in perspective.”
Hardy told this George heading into the Jazz's fifth game of the season. George then had a modest statline for someone like him, putting up 16 points and eight assists while shooting six-for-14 from the field. This is a notable improvement from how he started, but those are the baby steps needed for his next performance against the Bulls.
George is seen as part of the Jazz's future. He may not necessarily have hit the ground running, but luckily he's playing for a team that has given him a pretty long leash. Since the bar is set pretty low, George has pretty much all season and then some to show Utah what he's got.
He's not out of the woods yet, but at least George has shown that he can work through whatever problem is ailing him. It's just too bad that a new injury kept him out of the Jazz's latest win against the Spurs.
He may also have to make himself stand out more with Isaiah Collier back in the fold plus, Collin Sexton and Jordan Clarkson aren't going anywhere. Luckily, going through hurdles is something that George has already become more than familiar with in this season alone.