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Sometimes coaches are forced to try out new and different lineups and rotations. Injury and foul trouble are the most common culprits when it comes to a coach changing up a gameplan when it comes to who is on the court.
There are a number of coaches that don’t like to shake things up too much or are wary of going against the grain. From the outside, those coaches often seem like they’re afraid to adapt or are unwilling to budge.
Then there are coaches who enjoy being challenged to try something different. Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy falls into the latter category. He’s OK with getting weird when it comes to the mix of the five players on the court.
“There’s moments you have to do weird things, and I’m a big believer in that," Hardy said. “With where we want to go, you have to be flexible. I don’t want our team to think we’re going to come out and just throw fastballs and changeups and that’s it. We need to have some things in our pocket that are a little bit different.”
A good example of it came Thursday night in the Jazz’s loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Though they’d trailed by 18 points, they had climbed back into the game in the third quarter. But, a number of players on the Hawks were having an out-of-this-world shooting night, especially Onyeka Okongwu, who finished 8-of-14 from 3-point land.
Okongwu, a small center, was causing massive problems for the Jazz defense, and the Jazz’s offense was being hampered by all the switching the Hawks were doing. So, in the fourth quarter, Hardy put Lauri Markkanen at the five, flanked by Ace Bailey, Svi Mykhailiuk, Keyonte George and Isaiah Collier.
“I felt like with the group they had out there, our best chance to slow them down was to just switch everything,” Hardy said. “And in that moment, we’re behind, I felt like giving ourselves a bunch of space trying to play some dribble-drive against all of their switching was going to be our best opportunity to create some good looks.”
Ultimately it didn’t work. The Jazz had some unfortunate misses, some ill-timed turnovers and the Hawks were able to get the win. But, that won’t be the last you see of the Jazz trying out some different stuff.
And the players like it. Markkanen said it’s fun for him to play as a switching five and do something a little different. Kevin Love said Hardy continues to show trust across the roster by giving different responsibilities to everyone no matter if it’s him at 37 years old or Bailey at 19. And Bailey said he gets excited thinking about how it makes the Jazz a hard team to scout.
“It’s good because it throws off the defense,” he said. “And the scouting teams that watch us, sometimes we might run the same action over and over, but next game we won’t run it at all and we’ll have a different lineup. There’s something else we got planned.”
Hardy has been tame with the weirdness so far this season, but once the younger players start to feel more comfortable, and the Jazz stabilize a bit from losing Walker Kessler for the year, Hardy might be more willing to test the waters a little more.
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- Ace Bailey logged his first 20-point NBA game (Deseret News)
- Utah Jazz blown out on Timberwolves’ fluorescent court (Deseret News)
- Ace Bailey’s quick thinking could be his greatest asset (Deseret News)
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