HadAnEffectHere
Well-Known Member
People see what they want to see. It's already an established narrative that Hardy doesn't want to tank "the right way" and is holding back the youngins from doing maximum damage. It's hard to change that perception when the vets are taking most of the shots. The minutes don't even matter that much.
Ehh, I think this is a combination of
1. Will Hardy has very little credibility with a lot of fans due to how terrible he is at coaching defense. Him finishing last in defense two years ago with Kris Dunn and Walker Kessler is frankly unbelievable.
2. The team has a relentless propaganda apparatus that is constantly hyping up guys way beyond what they should. The Jazz PR team OK'd Taylor Hendricks saying he wanted to be the best defender in the NBA so Hendricks being unable to defend at all this year is obviously going to be disappointing to people.
3. The idea that the Jazz traded away a 26 year old Hall of Famer with three years left on his contract to tank for three straight years and they ended up with a non-NBA player (Cody Williams), a guy who has some shot of sticking in the league but it doesn't look good (Taylor Hendricks), and a guy who has a 50/50 shot of being a good 4th option on offense and a very positive defender in 4 years (Ace Bailey) is not very pleasant and it's much nicer to blame the coach.
4. Ace is an absolutely terrible fit with Lauri (being an off-ball PF as well), and there was a lot of rationalization/propaganda that he could actually play SG/SF as well and this didn't mean the end of Lauri in Utah. But like...