Utah Jazz enter the homestretch of the preseason after win over New Zealand Breakers

The Utah Jazz have just one more preseason game left.

They played their fourth warmup game on Monday night against the NBL’s New Zealand Breakers — comfortably winning 114-94 despite sitting their starters for the second half — and they’ll play one more in Sacramento on Thursday night.

After that, the Jazz are still going to have five days before the regular season starts, and those five days are going to be critical.

“At that time, we obviously will have so much more installed on both ends of the court that it’s going to be a time to continue to really dig into all the details,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said.

“Conditioning as a team should be much higher by that point than it was the first day in Hawaii, and so we’re going to try to use that opportunity to do that last 5-to-10% to get ready for opening night.”

Not only will those final practice days be a time to iron out wrinkles, simplify and refine what has been learned over the past couple of weeks, but it will also be a time for really gearing up for games that matter.

That’s going to be when the Jazz start preparing for the Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Clippers and the Phoenix Suns — their first three opponents of the 2023-24 season.

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Starters resting

The Jazz held out their starters and veterans for the entirety of the second half on Monday night and I would expect that in their final preseason game on Thursday we see even more of the same.

Don’t be surprised if we see a lot more action from the end of bench players, two-way guys and rookies against the Kings. That means that Monday could be the biggest opportunity to date for guys like Taylor Hendricks, Brice Sensabaugh and new two-way player Josh Christopher.

But don’t forget that these final days of the preseason are also critical for guys like Luka Samanic, Ömer Yurtseven and Simone Fontecchio, who are either playing for a contract guarantee or trying to establish themselves as useful rotation players.

Will Hardy’s decisions

After the game in Sacramento and the final practice days, Hardy is going to have to make some serious rotation decisions. He’s going to have to designate who the starters will be, who is going to get minutes and who will not and he will have to make sure that the team is on board with his decisions.

Hardy has built in some leeway for himself by saying that starters and rotations for this Jazz team could change from one night to the next, depending on matchups or any other situation that arises, and he’s assured the team that those decisions will not be made to punish anyone or send any kind of message other than “we want to win.”

That being said, these decisions are going to be important and Hardy doesn’t want to get it wrong.

Navigating making the right decision based on performances and also managing the locker room and every players’ feelings is not easy. But, that’s the job. That’s what he signed up for.

While last season everything was so new and up in the air and there were no expectations, this season Hardy does have expectations and there are different pressures. We’ll get to learn a lot based on the decisions he makes and how the team reacts to those decisions.