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Hardy isn’t the guy for this job. It isn’t working

Hard to make defensive rotations when you are playing Love and Nurkic, two guys who cant rotate, nearly 48 MPG.

There's just not defensive talent on the roster to judge Hardy. We are going to have to replace Nurk/Love/Brice minutes with guys who can actually play next year and that will greatly improve the defense.

I mean, there's a reason Nurkic has been bounced around the league and couldn't stick on teams that badly needed center rotation minutes.
Would the defense be better if harkless played?
 
Will seems to be doing fine. The personnel decisions are coming from the front office. Adding some quality, supportive vets creates the right environment for the young guys to start playing a leading role without being completely on their own. Keyonte and Flip are developing pretty well. Walt has had a few good games too. Walker looked like he took a step before his injury. I think that's the main story this season, along with positioning ourselves for the draft lottery.
 
Of course, but Harkless is probably a tank buster so they dont want to play him at this point. I'm guessing (hoping) he will get more minutes when the vets start sitting and they can balance out Harkless's positive play with Cody's negative play.
We can't have Harkless out there flipping games like he did in Boston. Bring him in next year.
 
Hardy isn't a good coach. His defensive scheme, whatever the hell it's supposed to be, hasn't made an appearance yet and it's year 4.

But "just play all the young guys all the minutes and *develop* them and they'll be great" is just fantasy.

Young guys on teams like OKC end up being the best version of themselves, because they can learn from great players, they're in a good situation, the expectations are realistic and they have to be at they're best in practice and in games to get any minutes.

Young guys on teams like the Jazz end up being crap, because they have none of the above. Not that the material has been given has been all that great to start with it. No-one's developing Cody into anything useful at the NBA level.
I mean, that is what OKC did though in rebuilding their team. In 2022, not a single player over 24 years old played over 1300 minutes (that's 15 mpg average over 82 games). They played all their young guys and let them figure it out.

Also, all of these critiques are Hardy are also resting on the fact that the Jazz are sitting in the one place they can't sit. Not in the playoffs and not keeping their draft pick. Something has to change. I wouldn't be critical of playing veterans if the Jazz were going to make the playoffs, or if the veterans were helping them tank into a top 5 pick again.
 
He's a great coach. I wonder if some of the choices he makes on playing time are correct though. I think there may be some personality clashes that he could work on. He's also young and developing. Overall its tough to argue he isn't a good coach.

As it relates to being the guy for this job... I think he's very competitive. I think this tanking thing has not been the best for him. I am not sure its great for any good coach tbh. I don't think we can fully judge him based on his last three years but I do have some confidence that the defense will be better once we are out of tank mode.
 
I've seen some discussions on draft twitter about the extent to which a team can affect development and it convinced me that it's much less than we seem to think. What really matters is 1) identifying talent and 2) acquiring talent. I used to believe that a player's situation was crucial to a players development....you know the idea that Kawhi would not become Kawhi unless he went to the Spurs. While I still believe some truth to that, I've started to side with the idea that talent is talent and that will shine through regardless. The special sauce isn't development, it's identifying and acquiring the talent. There are exceptions, of course, but this true in most cases.

So wherever you lie on the "play the young guys" spectrum, I think the effect is fairly muted. If there are gains from more opportunity, it's probably not a ton. And same goes for the possible negative effects. The real development plan for a player like Cody is to just draft someone good like Matas instead. Our current level has less to do with Hardy's development skill/minutes choices and more to do with the the quality of prospect we're giving him.
 
I just want him to start getting NBA reps with the ball to see what he can do.
Honestly he deserves it... so for a guy who hasn't had a real NBA contract I think I'm cool with him showing he belongs and making a living.
 
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