Jazz HC Will Hardy has 'Whole League Flummoxed'
The Utah Jazz have lost two in a row, but this team's 10-5 record still has it positioned as the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference. The Jazz have done it without a bonafide superstar player, thanks to the coaching innovations of Will Hardy.
Hired this past summer to succeed Quin Snyder, saying that the 34-year-old Hardy has exceeded expectations in Utah would be an understatement. In fact, according to Marc Stein's recent Substack column, Hardy has the NBA world eating its collective heart out.
Hardy’s first month’s worth of regular-season games has been absorbing for circumstances that have a whole league flummoxed.
During training camp, more than a few of Hardy’s peers in the coaching business could be heard wondering aloud if he was secretly regretting his acceptance of the Utah job, given what happened to Ime Udoka in Boston. Had Hardy stayed as an assistant coach with the Celtics, he presumably would have been elevated to head coach rather than Mazzulla once Udoka was suspended for the season for a relationship with a female co-worker that Celtics officials deemed to be in violation of team policy. Hardy’s departure to succeed Quin Snyder with the Jazz, at age 34, positioned Mazzulla, also 34, to take over for Udoka.
Good luck finding anyone fretting for Hardy any longer. The Jazz awoke Monday with a record of 10-5 — with Philadelphia needing a 59-point, 11-rebound, eight-assist, seven-swat masterpiece Sunday night from Joel Embiid to hold them off and dislodge Utah from an undisputed hold on the Westʼs No. 1 seed. This is the same Jazz team, of course, that was widely expected to tank its way to the best lottery odds they could muster in the Brick For Vic(tor Wembanyama) Sweepstakes.
Indeed, even Jazz CEO Danny Ainge has been "pleasantly surprised" by the hay Hardy has made in such a short time. The Jazz went from #TankNote to vying with the Western Conference titans for competitive supremacy.
We're also learning that Hardy was a sleeper name in higher demand around league circles than initially believed. Stein reveals that the Boston Celtics were not happy to see him go, especially in the wake of how things played out with Ime Udoka, and the San Antonio Spurs reportedly had designs of Hardy potentially succeeding Gregg Popovich, once he finally gives up the head-coaching reins.
We’ve written on numerous occasions this year about how Hardy’s Utah predecessor, Snyder, is regarded in league coaching circles as San Antonio’s preferred choice to take over the Spurs when Popovich decides to step aside. Yet it’s likewise believed in coaching circles that Hardy was very high on the Spursʼ list of potential successors and the most likely favorite from the assistant ranks — ahead of Becky Hammon or anyone else you wish to list — had Popovich decided it was time after last season.
If the best predictor of the future is the past, then the Jazz will climb out of this funk that saw the team go 1-2 on its most recent road trip. Only time will tell exactly how the 2022-23 season resolves for Hardy, but even making the playoffs will be a massive coup for Ainge, based on preseason expectations for the Jazz.
A playoff berth would certainly disappoint those fans in Jazz Nation pining for Victor Wembanyama, but so be it. Hardy seems to have captured lightning in a bottle, and there's no predicting what the limits of that feat might be.
