HC Will Hardy Sees NBA Finals as 'Massively Hopeful' for Jazz

The landscape of the NBA is changing. The Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat reaching the NBA Finals is proof that winning a championship can be done without a 'super team' or being located in a major market.

This should give Utah Jazz fans hope that contending for a title isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Utah’s head coach Will Hardy sat down with ESPN insider Brian Windhorst on The Hoop Collective podcast and shared his thoughts on what this means for the small-market Jazz.

“It’s a reminder—you look at Miami, it’s slapping us all in the face,” Hardy said. “This is a team sport. You can win at the highest level and get to the Finals—I mean Miami was in the play-in. The way they play—the way they interact. The way everybody feels they’re a part of it. Everybody plays a role. It’s not a collection of these giant names—massive contract guys that we paid all this money and we’re way in the luxury tax and this is how we’re going to go about it. Everybody is maximizing themselves and the Heat have done that for years. This series is massively hopeful for Utah and other markets like us.”

The days of building a team around three stars playing under max contracts could be a thing of the past. The Golden State Warriors were able to use that recipe in 2018 and 2022, but in their defense, the core of their roster was homegrown players.

The Nuggets have served themselves well in the draft by selecting Nikola Jokić (2014), Jamal Murray (2016), and Michael Porter (2018). The only big-name free agent acquisition was when Denver signed forward Aaron Gordon to a four-year, $86 million contract in 2022. The Nuggets are also built to be around for a while, with their four best players still in their 20s.

The Heat made it to the Finals led by a top-10 player in Jimmy Butler and two-time All-Star Bam Adebayo, but after that, it’s far from a star-studded cast. In fact, the Jazz cut reserve center Cody Zeller heading into the 2022-23 season. Zeller now serves as Adebayo’s backup and is firmly planted in Miami’s rotation.

This is good news for the small markets of the NBA moving forward. That said, the Jazz still need to find a path to a top-10 player in the league if they’re going to be considered serious contenders. The last team to win a title without a first-team All-NBA talent rostered was the 2004 Detroit Pistons.

Could Lauri Markkanen develop into a top-10 player? Maybe the Jazz strike gold in the 2023 draft with one of their first-round draft picks.

There’s also a chance the Jazz could pry an All-NBA player away from a franchise looking to rebuild. Acquiring a player that would make Markkanen Utah’s second option won’t be easy and may require a little bit of luck to pull it off.

The road to that player starts in less than two weeks when the Jazz have three rolls of the dice to land a franchise changer with picks 9, 16, and 28 pick in a loaded 2023 NBA draft class. Draft day is on June 22, with the start time at 6:00 pm MDT.

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