Well, 82-0 is off the table.

The Utah Jazz suffered a blowout loss in their season opener on Wednesday, surrendering an early lead as the scrappy Memphis Grizzlies pestered and pressured them. Tepid Jazz defense allowed Ty Jerome to go off for a career-high 45 points, and in general Utah struggled with the Grizzlies' physical play and harassing defense.

Keyonte George led the Jazz with a hyperefficient 22 points, and Lauri Markkanen added 18 points and nine rebounds. Former Grizzly Jaren Jackson Jr. fouled out of his first game in FedEx Forum as a visitor, but not before chipping in 15 points.

We won't do this after every game, but since we finally have real basketball to pore over, here are some random, notebook-style thoughts on the 123-103 loss.

Overall, I'm not really any less excited about the 2026-27 Jazz than I was before tipoff. The problems that cost them the game were all things we knew might be issues: point of attack defense, rebounding, playmaking... It's not like some new, unexpected flaw popped into existence.

The most disappointing thing was how the effort level dropped when things started to get out of hand. Especially in the third quarter, there were moments when two or three Jazz players would stand flat-footed while one hyper Grizzly or another would zip through or around them to grab a loose ball. That said, home openers have a weird emotional energy that the Jazz won't be facing in their 40 other road games. Memphis is a team playing loose and hard against low expectations, so once they got a little momentum going, the glee that overtook the 901 area code was probably hard to overcome.

My macro opinion of the Jazz didn't change: all of the pieces are still there for the Jazz to be a very solid basketball team when it all comes together, and all of the buggaboos are sill there for them to struggle on a given night.

It also feels like the game unfolds very differently with Jusuf Nurkic healthy. If the Bosnian center comes back around the prescribed "reevaluation" point, he will have missed a dozen or so games, and it will be interesting to see how many games during that first eighth of the season feel like they may have flipped. In this one, the Jazz ball handlers struggled to get separation on screens, and that's one of Nurk's strengths. They also struggled to end defensive possessions with a rebound.

Right from the beginning, Markkanen seemed to understand that a little extra focus on rebounding was going to be necessarily, and he would often crash in from a distance to help on the glass. Jackson and fill-in starter Jaxson Hayes probably need to offer a little more in that area, especially while Nurk is out. Both centers grabbed between 8 and 9% of available rebounds while they were on the floor. That's not enough for the team's primary bigs in this sans-Nurk phase.

With Nurkic's screening and elbow creation, Utah would have had another tool to break Memphis' pressure. So while it seems crazy to say that Nurkic alone would have helped cover a 20-point gap, the reality he might have entirely changed the terms of engagement. The Jazz offense was just very gummed up during Hayes' minutes, and that was at least partly because screening actions weren't really working to give the guards more breathing room. Which led to...

Guards really struggled with ball pressure, and in particular that made it hard for them to get the star forwards involved to the appropriate degree. Everything Trip and Lauri got just felt harder. I was actually surprised to see that Markkanen had 18 points, because his night felt quieter than that. Jackson bagged a couple of threes and hit a couple of contested paint floaters. But this game was the perfect representation of a point I made throughout the preseason: that for the Jazz to post a winning record this year, George (or someone) is going to have to be more of a game manager and table setter.

Darryn Peterson's timing was just a little off on some of Utah's scripted actions. They'd run one of their patented "Lauri actions" and Peterson would just need an extra beat to recognize the advantage it created, and by the time he did, the window was closed. That's totally fine for a rookie in his first NBA game, but it's part of why Markkanen didn't get a lot of his usual looks early on.

Will Hardy said after the game that the Jazz "overdribbled" and spent too much time dribbling into traffic.

Twelve seconds (and sixteen dribbles) is a long time to have the ball when you're not really attacking or running anything. Again, credit Memphis' tough defense for not giving Key a lot of options here, but at some point if your best idea is to dribble around the perimeter sixteen times, you just need to get off the ball or call a play. (This deflection did result in a foul call, but it very easily could have not been called, and the Jazz didn't score on the resulting possession anyway.)

There are counters to Memphis' high pressure, and the Jazz did eventually find some of them — just not consistently enough. They had screeners slip when defenders hedged high. They also discovered that it was harder for a second defender to harass them if they drove to the outside, then could flip the ball back into the middle after help defenders committed.

But mostly this one was lost on defense.

The point-of-attack defense was, in a word, bad. Too often, defenders were immediately guarding from behind or from the side, even without a screen. We'll get to usual suspects like Brice Sensabaugh and Kyle Filipowski shortly. More surprising to me was how rough some of the interior defense was when Hayes was on the floor. His six blocks would lead a box score watcher to think he was in lockdown mode, but it was at least as likely that he'd offer only slight resistance.

George took a charge during a stretch of the second in which he had seven straight points, but he too had some weird defensive moments. Here are three separate plays where he was the designated helper or last line defender and just sort of moved out of the way.

In fairness to these guys, we could find ineffable defensive clips from just about anybody.

It's hard to imagine a rougher start for Brice and Flip. The former started by bricking two angle threes, botching a dunk, and committing two pretty rough dribbling turnovers. More importantly, the team defense with Sensabaugh on was rough enough (139.3!) that Hardy had to pull the plug after just 13:34 and look to Josh Okogie instead.

Flip grabbed exactly as many rebounds as you or I did, and once again his defense was an issue, too.

These are both players that could really help the Jazz with offensive generation, provided they can justify their minutes with enough other winning stuff. Okogie siphoning minutes from Sensabaugh is a bit of a shot across the bow. As for Flip, his first half stint lasted less than three minutes[fn]Memphis scored 12 points in eight possessions.[/fn] before Hardy went back to a more traditional five. He only played 3:50 in the second half, until garbage time. They just need to justify their minutes, especially on nights that their offensive contributions are limited.

Bailey looked great. George was probably the Jazz's best player overall, but there were stretches where Ace's impact and energy were the most positive thing the Jazz had going for them. Right from when he checked into the game, his defensive instincts and length made a difference. He had five boards for a team starved for more rebounding help from the wings, and dished three assists.

He made some defensive mistakes, too, but overall there were positive signs that Bailey will contribute meaningfully this year.

Markkanen was a couple of 3-point makes away from having a very typical Markkanen night. He went 1-for-7 from deep, and all of his outside shots were above-the-break threes coming off a screen, usually with a decent amount of space. Normal shot variance happens, and if he goes even 3-for-7, his night feels significantly different. Another sign that the pieces are still there for the Jazz to be really good.

He (10 FTA) and George (7) can still get to the line almost at will, even on a night when not much else was working for the offense. Jackson had 15 points on 10 shots, too. This team is going to look way more capable offensively on most nights.

The Jazz just need to rebound better, find their counters when teams pressure them... and of course keep working on the defense.