Jazz HC Sounds Off on What Improvements Must be Made This Offseason
The Utah Jazz are still in the first few days of their offseason. Coming up short of qualifying for the play-in, the Jazz are now resting and ruminating on all that transpired in 2022-23.
On Tuesday, Jazz head coach Will Hardy held court for his end-of-season press conference. Before he goes diving into breaking down the film of this past season, he revealed the reason why he's perhaps not doing that right away.
"There's a lot to go back and look at," Hardy said. "You have to, No. 1, let a little bit of time pass as you sift through it so that hopefully we're going back as a staff, and I'm going back individually and looking at things unemotionally. We need to look at how we played on both sides of the ball."
In response to a question about how NBA coaches can improve during the offseason, Hardy dropped some insight on a couple of areas the Jazz to get better at moving forward.
"We obviously have room for improvement in both areas," Hardy said. "Obviously, defensively, we need to get better. I think we made a jump defensively after the trade deadline, but that's going to be a huge area of focus in this offseason going into next year is, how do we put the group of guys that we have in a better position to play better team defense? There's also a ton of situational stuff we always look at. Late-game execution, different lineups, maybe some situations that we can put our players in more."
The Jazz played in a ton of close games that were decided in the clutch. Sometimes they persevered and found ways to make the plays needed when the chips were down, while sometimes not. Fine-tuning that from a coaching perspective will be helpful, but the best thing for developing that "clutch gene" was getting the players precious minutes in those high-pressure situations, especially the young guys.
As for defense, Jazz fans can agree with Coach Hardy that improvements are needed. Utah played modestly better, at times, following the trade deadline — thanks largely to the arrival of Kris Dunn and the emergence of Walker Kessler's rim protection — but it was nowhere near a playoff standard.
Hardy and his staff will use these couple of months off to look back and diagnose areas for improvement, and really isolate the things the Jazz did well collectively and individually. How Utah's defense, in particular, could improve through draft picks and other offseason acquisitions could help speed Hardy's quest along.
"Those are conversations we'll have as a staff throughout the offseason, depending on what happens with the roster," Hardy said. "You have to be ready to adjust. The NBA is a league of change. You always assume there's going to be some things that are different, whether that's just adding people through the draft, or different things that happen through the offseason."
Hardy made it clear, however, that his self-scouting isn't just about the players. It's about how the coaches can better meet the expectation, too.
"There's obviously a lot to look at as a staff and as a coach and try to figure out how we can be better," Hardy said. "Like, in no way are the players the only ones who need to improve. I thought I felt more comfortable at the end of the year than I did at the beginning of the year and I fully expect that myself and our staff will feel more comfortable going into next training camp than we did this year."
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