This past Tuesday evening, coach Will Hardy was visibly angry at the Jazz, you could almost fed up with his team. You can understand his frustration, considering the squad is at the bottom of the league with a poor 16-57 record, but this last defeat really seemed to broke him.
“There’s moments where stubbornness is cute, and there’s moments where stubbornness is embarrassing,” he said after falling to the Grizzlies in a blowout 140-103 loss. The Utah tactician was certainly not hiding his emotions any longer during the postgame interviews.
The Jazz even lead the match 65-64 in the first half, but somehow fell 76-38 in the second at the Delta Center. “Part of becoming a professional basketball player in the NBA, and part of becoming an NBA team that’s competing, is the willingness to do simple things over and over again,” Hardy said.
He then added: “I thought early in the game the team, on both sides of the ball, was very active, connected, unselfish. In the second quarter we had some pockets where our play wasn’t perfect. But the second half was unrecognizable in almost every way.”
As far as this season goes, Utah’s youngest core hasn’t stood out at all. None of these prospects have earned a spot to be considered starters in the NBA, despite being given a lot of minutes on the big stage. Hardy always expects his pupils to play a certain way, even if they are losing the match.
Now, he even questions the motivations or desires behind some of his players. “At some point, every person needs to look in the mirror and understand what’s being asked of them, and try to do it to the best of their ability, at the highest level of intensity that they can,” he told the press.
“I’m a very competitive person, and there are moments where I feel like I’m having to restrain the core of who I am, because there seems to be an unwillingness, at times, to understand this is not something that you can take for granted,” Will concluded.
