Keyonte George organized an offseason trip that brought the team together

This summer, third-year guard Keyonte George sent a message to Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy, asking if it was OK for him to take the rest of the players on the team on a trip for a week.

“The answer is, of course,” Hardy said. “In general, the best teams I’ve been around have had really good human connection. And I think our guys are really trying to build that by spending a lot of time around each other.”

A number of the Jazz’s younger players spent the majority of the offseason in Utah, continuing their training and practicing on a regular basis at Zions Bank Basketball Campus and various places around Salt Lake.

That was already a huge bonus for the Jazz. The young core of the team wanted to be in Utah and was willing to dedicate themselves to extended work in the gym. But, George wanted the players to have a chance to do something together that wasn’t organized by the team.

George is from Lewisville, Texas, not far from Dallas. It’s a place he’s familiar with and was able to set up training opportunities and outings for those that would be able to make it. In the end, it was George, Taylor Hendricks, Brice Sensabaugh, Ace Bailey, Elijah Harkless, Walter Clayton Jr. and John Tonje.

“I think the hardest thing in the NBA is to build camaraderie,” George said. “It’s easy in college, just because we’re always with one another and staying close to each other. But now we’ve all got our own lives ... I hadn’t (done anything) like that my first two years in the league. So to do something like that, it was pretty special for me.”

They went through conditioning drills together, played pickup games and weight trained. But they also went to a concert together, watched football games, went out to eat as a group.

From the outside looking in, it’s an obvious way for the players to create a more intimate bond, which can help with on-court chemistry and bring them together as people outside of basketball, and it’s clear that George took on some responsibility as a leader in putting the trip together.

But there are other ways that an excursion like this can show up for players on a team, and in ways that Hardy is already seeing, just after two days of training camp.

“The way you see it reflected is they’re able to be really honest with each other,” Hardy said on Tuesday. “The way they communicate is not so careful. They’re pretty blunt with each other, and there’s a lot less sensitivity to receiving feedback from teammates.”

There are, of course, players that weren’t able to make it to Dallas that week. But the team kept in contact, players were texting and talking to each other and asking how the trip was going, and then the larger group was able to spend more time together in Utah.

For those that were on the trip, they’re hoping that they’ve started what can become a team tradition. They want there to be a player-driven, player-organized, offseason trip where the coaches and the normal practice facility and the things that they see every day aren’t the focal point.

“I think it was big for us, and I think it’s something that we should continue to do in the future,” Sensabaugh said. “Just because of how impactful it was to the people who were there ... and it was only four or five days, but it gives you a different type of connection with those guys ... I think it was really important.”