CHICAGO — Walking through the hallway on the way to the visitors locker room inside the United Center, Keyonte George yelled at the top of his lungs, with a smile on his face.

“Yeah! It’s about time!”

The Utah Jazz had started the season with six straight losses, each one adding to a mounting pile of anger, frustration, doubt and desire. It all came to a head on Monday night, when the Jazz ended the drought and got their first win of the 2024-25 campaign with a 135-126 victory over the Chicago Bulls.

“There is an element of like, we’re 0-and-6, everybody’s pissed off and we’re fighting, the guys are scratching and clawing,” Hardy said “At a certain point you’ve just had enough. And I think that our guys had had enough.”

George lead the way for the Jazz, scoring a career-high tying 33 points to go with nine assists. It was easily his best game of the season after starting the year in a bit of a shooting slump and struggling to get into a good rhythm on either side of the ball. On Monday he was decisive, quick, and looked in control of the game.

But, it wasn‘t just George who stepped up to help the Jazz snap the losing streak. It was also veteran John Collins’ best game of the year with 28 points, 13 rebounds and five assists. Collin Sexton added 24 assists and five points, and Walker Kessler finished with a 12-point, 16-rebound double-double.

Maybe more importantly, putting the boxscore aside, was that the Jazz were fiery and competitive and tenacious in sticking to their game plan. Collins said that he’d felt a difference in the air when the Jazz held their shootaround on Monday morning, that everyone seemed locked in and ready to fight in a way that was just a little bit different.

After the game, long after the players had cooled down, showered, dressed and were ready to get on a bus to head to the team hotel, Sexton seemed out of breath and exhausted.

“This is how you’re supposed to feel after a game — tired,” Sexton said. “This is how hard you have to play to win games in the NBA.”

The Jazz are going to have a lot of time to digest this one, with two days off before they head to Milwaukee to face the Bucks, and what Hardy is hoping sinks in how the game felt on the court, no matter the score. He wants the players to be able to identify things that are improving and the differences between what works and what is sustainable vs. what’s fleeting and not easily controllable.

That was the biggest reason the Jazz were able to win on Monday night, they went into the game believing that what they’d practiced and how they’d prepared was going to benefit them, even if it didn’t result in a win.

“We’ve got to go out with pride,” George said. “Tonight that’s what happened. As a group, as a collective, from the staff to the players ... we’d had enough. We wanted to come in here and show that we can compete at a high level and play together, play the right way.”