Jazz HC Will Hardy Gives Take on Team’s Controversial 4-Guard Lineup

During Wednesday’s night opener, the Utah Jazz decided to roll out an interesting four-guard lineup that raised some eyebrows. In the group, it put one big like Lauri Markkanen at the five next to Ochai Agbaji at the four, rounded out with three smaller guards to complete.

While an innovative concept, game one of the season proved the lack of success that came with the idea. The Jazz fell flat in their opener by 16 points against the Sacramento Kings, prompting Will Hardy to make some adjustments going into the next contest.

In game two, Hardy opted not to push out the newly formed group of five and decided to play a bit more sizeable lineups. In the end, it worked out in their favor as they managed to earn their first win of the year against the Los Angeles Clippers, 120-118.

After Friday's game, Tony Jones of The Athletic asked coach Hardy about what it was that led to the shift, as he described that the four-guard lineup was an experiment that just did not go as planned:

“I didn’t do a very good job on Wednesday, man. We tried something that didn’t work very well on Wednesday. I told you, we have humility, and we went back and looked at it and we decided to change some things. In particular, Lauri playing in three stints was a trigger, and it allowed us to play some different groups together. That’s out job, is to continue to self-evaluate as a team, how we’re operating as a staff, things we need to do on both sides of the ball, things we need to change."

Hardy continued on to note some the positive strides this team took as a result of the removal the lineup against the Clippers:

“As a coach, your number one focus usually is who’s in the game, and who plays well with who. And there’s still moments where it doesn’t look perfect, but I think tonight is better. Not just because we won, I just thought the flow of the game and how those lineups felt was better than Wednesday. And we’ll continue to look at it -- we are just as critical of ourselves after we win as we are when we lose. I’m sure there’s four assistants right now that hate 20 of the plays I called, and why did we do this matchup. And that’s why we do what we do -- we get together, we watch film, we argue, we try to figure out the best answers, and we take it to the team."

While throwing out a trendy small-ball lineup was a tempting style to run, it is proven to be more ineffective than once imagined. Without running multiple bigs on this roster on the floor at the same time, the defensive versatility and rebounding take a big hit and make it hard to consistently depend on this five.

Instead, throwing the more sizeable Markkanen in more looks against LA led to a stellar performance, finishing with 35 points, 12 rebounds, and three assists. After finding notable success, look to see continued heavy involvement from the All-Star and less off the small-ball.

Markkanen and the rest of the Jazz will look to build off of Friday’s win against a short-handed Phoenix Suns team at 8 PM MST on the road.

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