This time it’s for real: New-look Jazz open season against new-look Thunder at Vivint Arena

If the burden of expectation for the coming season was weighing heavily on the Jazz before Wednesday’s season opener, they sure weren’t showing it in their final practice Tuesday afternoon at the Zion’s Bank Basketball Campus.

Asked if he gets nervous anymore before the first game on the schedule, forward Joe Ingles scoffed and replied, “No. I think you know me well enough to know I’m not getting nervous about much these days.”

He then jokingly inquired of the media whether 13th-year pro Mike Conley still gets nervous, before interrupting the point guard’s shooting session to ask him himself.

“Hey, Mike! Mike! Do you get nervous before the first game?” Ingles yelled across the gym. When Conley responded with an emphatic head shake, Ingles continued, “Mike doesn’t either. I guess we’re all in the same boat.”

Guard Donovan Mitchell, meanwhile, was cracking jokes about Ingles’ contract extension (“I told Joe, I said he’s not retiring until I do!”) and about his official height being revealed to be two inches shorter than what had previously been listed.

Apparently, none of the championship aspirations, or those lingering questions about the leaky defense exhibited during the preseason, or even Wednesday’s opponent — the Oklahoma City Thunder — are cause for anything other than eager anticipation at this point.

“It’s great to get the season going,” Mitchell said. “… We have things we obviously need to work on that stood out [in the preseason], but it’s here and I’m excited.”

Ingles used a variation of the same word multiple times.

After all the offseason movement, after all the intense speculation about the team’s change of direction (“We’ve made some adjustments — not major ones, but enough to respond and not react; I think that’s an important distinction,” noted coach Quin Snyder), and after all the hand-wringing from fans about how concerned they should be in regard to Utah’s 1-4 exhibition record, at long last, it’s time to roll everyone out onto the court and see what happens.

The players were definitely eager to get back to action. With the final preseason game a week back in the rearview mirror, Ingles conceded, “It felt like a long time.”

That said, when asked if the break between the end of that schedule and the start of this one might lead to some early sloppiness, he responded emphatically in the negative.

“If you’ve seen what we’ve been doing here, there’s no chance of us coming out flat,” he said. “We had a good week, we had a really good week, just practicing — obviously, we didn’t play a game, but simulating as much as we can.”

He went on to call the team “pretty focused” in its final practice session, saying he felt like the Jazz had resolved most of their problem areas during the past week.

While he was sarcastic when asked about getting the process started of trying to achieve certain expectations (“We leave that up to you brilliant writers”), Ingles did concede “We have our own in-house goals, if you want to call them that,” and said the team should be in a nice place once the ball goes up against OKC.

“We’re in a really good spot on both ends of the floor,” he said. “Obviously now the regular season starts [Wednesday] for us, so it’s time to be ready, be focused and get off to a good start.”

The only concession Mitchell was making, meanwhile, is that he’s not yet as constantly stoic as his teammate.

That said, he offered that the butterflies he’s had recently had nothing to do with Wednesday night looming.

“I was more nervous to do the [5 for the Fight jersey patch] press conference [Monday], to be honest,” Mitchell said. “I just get more nervous in a closed setting, as opposed to in front of fans, and playing basketball. I couldn’t explain to you why — that’s just how it is. I’ll be nervous right when the anthem goes, but outside of that, it’s just basketball.”

He said that his Tuesday evening would be spent eating dinner and watching the season-tipoff games featuring the Raptors and Pelicans, and the Lakers and Clippers, and that he’d be trying to pick up specific tips and tricks to eventually incorporate into his own game.

And beyond that … well, it would be anathema for this team to look too far into the future, wouldn’t it?

“It’s still exciting ’cause we’ve got a good team, but we’re about to play Game 1 of 82,” Ingles said. “So just step by step.”