TORONTO — Although Will Hardy has been in the NBA world for more than a decade, experiencing the trade deadline this season with the Utah Jazz offered a completely new perspective.
“It’s definitely a way different seat to be the head coach at the trade deadline,” Hardy told the Deseret News on Friday. “I’m glad it’s over.”
The Jazz made just one deal prior to the trade deadline, but it was a significant deal that meant the end of Mike Conley’s tenure as a Jazzman, as well as Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt and Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
Though Hardy had only coached these players for a few months before trading them away, they were a part of Hardy’s mission to create a new culture and new identity for the new era of Jazz basketball, and those relationships became very meaningful. At the top of the list of players that Hardy relied on was Conley.
“He’s everything you want as a first-year head coach,” Hardy said before the trade was finalized.
Hardy had leaned on Conley for advice, for wisdom and to help bring along some of the younger players on the roster. The fact that Hardy and Conley are both 35 years old, both are married with young children and have both been around the league for a long time made it easy for them to find some commonality and build trust with one another.
“It was hard to say goodbye,” Hardy said. “There’s a lot of time spent together, a lot of conversations about basketball, about life. This transition in the first year of being a head coach, it’s a lot and there’s a lot of moving parts and Mike was so steady every single day — his demeanor, his approach, his mood. He was somebody that I felt like I could really count on in the game, but I also just felt like you can really count on him day-to-day.”
For Hardy though, this trade deadline didn’t just give him a new appreciation for the relationships with the players, it also put him squarely into a position he’s never been in before.
Certainly he had been asked for his opinion on players as the deadline neared whether it was as an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs for years or last season as an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics. But as a head coach, he was involved in discussions about the future of the team and was largely responsible for maintaining some normalcy as rumors swirled regarding his team.
“Everything was different,” he said. “You’re in a way different position as the head coach in terms of your responsibility to the players, how you carry yourself every day, how much empathy you have for what they’re going through with all the rumors and uncertainty. Obviously involved in the conversations about our team on a way different level as the head coach. So yeah, it was unique to be in that spot.”
Hardy praised the Jazz’s front office, both Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik, for keeping him informed throughout the whole process. While offering his input was a welcomed part of the equation, Hardy realized that he also had to maintain a level head regarding any deals that the Jazz were in discussions about.
“You’re talking about the team now and you’re talking about what it could be and as we all know, with the deadline nothing’s finished until it’s finished and so it’s all hypothetical. And then in one second, boom, it’s done and everything’s different,” Hardy said, snapping his fingers to emphasize the quickness with which things can change. “So it’s hard. It’s hard to manage some of the emotions of that with the guys because the feelings that they’re having are very real and you can’t discredit that. It’s a necessary part of the job.”
And, just as going through the trade deadline as a rookie head coach was new for Hardy, so will be managing the team in the aftermath.
The Jazz are welcoming Juan Toscano-Anderson and Damian Jones — both acquired from the Los Angeles Lakers — who will join the team in New York on Saturday night. But instead of making any assumptions about how much they’ll be a part of the Jazz’s regular rotation, Hardy is keeping things really open and looking forward to evaluating things over the course of the rest of the season.
“The first thing is getting to meet them face-to-face and start to develop some of that human capital in order to try to start to build some of that trust between myself and the staff and those two guys,” Hardy said. “As far as what to expect in terms of opportunities with them, I’m not totally sure in this moment. It’s about doing those other things first, before we get to where they fit in the rotation and what exactly they’ll do on the floor for us.”
Hardy called the trade deadline a “huge learning experience.” He feels that even with having to say goodbye to Conley, and even with so many players departing, and with so much more on his plate through it all, that he came out the other side more prepared for what could come next.