I Don't think people are upset, I'm certainly not, it's just wacky to hear this from a head coach, and in combination with the other quotes from Quin.
You would think he would be talking about consistent effort, continual improvement and refinement, about the learning process, and how we are preparing for the post season.
I'm guessing it's not what he meant, but he gives the impression that he doesn't care if his players give good effort during the regular season, and that they can just slack off until the post season.
Even if that's exactly what he meant, I don't see a problem with it. There are many teams that are open about not caring about the RS....and those teams are all title contenders. Consistent effort in the RS means nothing when you're in a playoff series. At best you get HCA which can be taken back in one game. But the contenders are more focused on saving their legs. Not caring about RS is the correct path to go so I'm not alarmed when coaches are open about it.
To be clear, it's not a good thing that we have this animosity going in the locker room. It's better when there's a collective "we're coasting"....if that team is actually good enough to do so at least. But the Jazz do have some work to do and sometimes adversity is the only way things get better. Let's say Rudy never had covid. We probably win 3 of the 4 of the games and are 19-4 in the last 23 games. Pretty damn good....but if that's what happened, we probably wouldn't talking about the defense right now. It would have been ignored because they Jazz would have kept winning the same way they have been. So while it's not good that our defense is ****, it's good that our defense being **** has become the biggest story around this team and has taken a life on it's own.
After the DEN series we all knew our defense was terrible. It was obvious, easily identifiable, and frustrating for a lot of us that it didn't get addressed during that off season. We were clinging our hopes onto freaking Miye Oni to save the day. But it didn't get talked about because the Jazz were the best team by a mile for most of the year. It didn't come up until it was too late and we were already eliminated. There's not way to hide from this problem right now. Maybe this is the thing that elevates the collective defensive effort , forces Quin to make adjustments, or gives stronger motivation for a trade. It could also blow up and lead to an earlier deconstruction of this team. All I know is that if things stayed the same way and we were winning with our bad habits we probably would be ignoring the very real issues that are being brought up right now.