Will Hardy spent a lot of time over the summer thinking about the concept of player development — what it means to coaches, what it means to players, what goes into it, what the reward system is and how much a development philosophy impacts the culture of a team.
There is difficulty in trying to get young players to understand that individual development, team development and development of winning habits are not mutually exclusive — especially when the team is actively tanking and it’s clear that the front office is not prioritizing wins.
It is not a secret that the Utah Jazz have been tanking. The Jazz brass can’t say those words, but they don’t have to. During the process, they have traded away All-Stars in favor of fringe NBA players, they have sent away role players who thrive on other teams in order to collect draft assets, they have manipulated the roster and minutes and paid the fines for resting healthy players in order to preserve lottery positioning. Their actions have signaled that winning is not wanted.
Those actions put the head coach of the team in a bit of a pickle, because eventually the Jazz are going to want to win games.
“There is a real process right now of trying to have all of our players, especially our young players, understand that every time you take the court, you’re trying to win,” Hardy said. “There’s development of ‘my ability to contribute to winning’ that’s probably not talked about enough.”
The concern for Hardy is that development can be seen as specifically tied to the production of a singular player and that the NBA business infrastructure can reinforce the message that winning is not the most important thing.
It’s not uncommon for players to say things like, “I’m just trying to get 1% better every day.” And maybe a player who says something like that does see some improvement to his game. Maybe his stats continue to go up. Then he gets literally rewarded by way of a second contract or a more lucrative contract, even if that player’s improvement did not impact winning.
“When development is seen as the, ‘Hey, we’re just here to get a little bit better every day’, the result doesn’t impact you. And I don’t want that to go numb on the team,” Hardy said. “It’s really imperative with our team because of where they are in the arc of their careers.
“All of our young players are still on rookie-scale contracts, and so they haven’t gotten quote, unquote ‘paid’ yet. And whatever their deals are, after their rookie-scale deals, you get paid, and then you are actually told that you’re rewarded for what you did before.”
The message of the money is worrying because even if the second contract for some of the young players doesn’t come in the form of a max extension, it will still be more money than they’ve ever seen. It will still be wealth beyond anything they could have gotten in any other industry, and it will be based on behaviors, habits and results. But the results of a rebuilding or tanking team are losses.
So Hardy coaches hard. He coaches as if the wins matter. He comes down on the players when they make mistakes. He tries to drive home that no matter how good an individual stat line might look, it is the result and the way the team plays as a whole that truly matters.
Hardy has referenced an infamous Bobby Knight monologue about how the bench is a motivator. Knight used more flowery language, but the general gist of his message is that player behavior and approach can be changed if their minutes are a part of the reward system.
If a player isn’t doing the things that help a team, if they aren’t acting the right way or playing the right way, sitting on the bench will send a message to their brain that they have to change.
“When you get rewarded for not winning, it’s hard to tell yourself that winning is the most important thing,” Hardy said. “I want our team to focus, as a group, on trying to compete every night, to win. Doesn’t mean we’ll win every game, but the intent is to win.”
There is a chance that trying to create a culture of winning actually produces winning results, and whether that is a problem for the Jazz this season is a different conversation for a different article (coming soon), but what could be more detrimental to some of the players on the Jazz team is going too long believing that losing is OK.
Trying to reverse course later on down the road with young players who spent years believing that it was fine if they lost could end up being more difficult if there isn’t some kind of intervention now.
“When you get rewarded for not winning, it’s hard to tell yourself that winning is the most important thing. I want our team to focus, as a group, on trying to compete every night, to win. Doesn’t mean we’ll win every game, but the intent is to win.”
— Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy
Ultimately, Hardy believes that the players on the Jazz roster understand the importance of the culture and intent of the team as a whole. He thinks that his message has been well received and that his players are trending in the right direction when it comes to fighting for wins no matter the situation.
“I think I’m lucky that I have a group of young men that understand and have humility and take responsibility,” Hardy said. “In no way do I want my comments to be taken like I’m coaching a group of guys who don’t care about winning. But we’re a young group growing together. I’m a young coach, and we’re trying to make sure that our collective mindset every night is on the right things.”
So as the Jazz continue to navigate another rebuilding season, Hardy doesn’t want the players to think that just because they’re seeing individual improvement that it’s good enough and that they can ignore what is happening around them. Instead, he wants the sting of losing to remind them that the ultimate priority is to win games — that no matter how much they are paid or what happens after this season, it is wins that matter in the NBA.
