Who is Will Hardy? Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who knows a little something about winning, holds him in high regard. “I think he’s a star,” Kerr said. “I think the Jazz nailed it with Will.”
Why wasthe choice of CEO Danny Ainge and general manager Justin Zanik and owner Ryan Smith to replace? To take the team into its next era? To be the one tasked with delivering the organization its first NBA championship?
“He was the alpha of the group,” Brown said. “He was the guy that was telling people what to do and how to do it. And his teams were always winning, which caught our eye. … He stood out like a bright light.” Michael Kearney, then a sophomore guard from Washington, D.C., recalled being excited at the new “tall, super-skilled incoming freshman that had a chance to make our team really good. That was super-exciting that he decided to come to Williams over other higher-level offers. We were pumped to have him.”
Intramural slow-pitch softball? It was treated as a hallowed competition among the various varsity sports programs, who each fielded their own team. Hardy volunteered to be the pitcher , knowing he could learn opponents’ batting tendencies, and was soon directing his defense based on the batter: “I just vividly remember him pointing at the outfield: ‘Shift to your right.’ ‘Move back.’ ‘Come in.’ Just pointing around, telling other people what to do before he threw his pitch.
“He was really invaluable because you could put Will at any position and he would do well,” Maker said. “He could handle the ball, he could pass the ball, he had a basketball IQ, made his teammates better. Foot speed was another thing — he didn’t have a lot of that.” “Most people [in our group], myself included, majored in economics, interviewed and tried to get some sort of investment banking job, or consulting, in Boston or New York or D.C., and that was the path,” Geoghegan said. “Will was never interested in that. Not once. … The joke was, ‘He doesn’t have a plan for when he graduates.
“Pop wanted a role player that was all about the team first, that had a great work ethic, that no task was beneath him — like picking somebody up at the airport, some two-way guy from the G League,” Maker said. “… Coach Pop had a long list of things — and William checked every box.” Two years later, when video coordinator Bret Brielmaier left to take an assistant coach’s job with the Cavaliers, Hardy was promoted to the position. If “video coordinator” sounds like a nondescript job, well, the title belies the person’s importance within the Spurs organization. Some people associated with the franchise have equated the team’s video coordinator — a position once held by the likes of Mike Budenholzer and James Borrego — with being Popovich’s right arm.
In 2015, Popovich was named the new head coach for Team USA for 2017-20, succeeding Mike Krzyzewski. That would give him a chance to head up teams for both the 2019 World Championships in China, and the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo . The X’s and O’s knowledge, good as it is, apparently is the lesser part of the deal with Hardy, though.The Utah Jazz were reeling from chemistry problems at the end of last season, in spite of maintaining the same core for multiple years.How fortuitous, then, that Hardy is described as being uniquely equipped to bring a team together under either such circumstance.
“He has a really, really high EQ. He has a great feel for people,” Kerr explained. “… He’s got everything required to be a great coach — he’s smart and confident and humble and funny and an amazing communicator and collaborator. The guy is just really, really gifted.” And yet, he’s also “not afraid to be vulnerable,” as Geoghegan puts it. Hardy’s first call, upon getting the Jazz job, was to his mom, Melinda . He’s allowed Brown and Maker to take on father-figure roles to him, particularly after his actual dad, William Sr., died in 2015 at age 57 due to the effects of ALS.
He’s a bit idiosyncratic, whether it be playing those intramural softball games shoeless, just because he felt like it; or periodically reacting to a comment with uncomfortably long silence and a thousand-yard stare while processing every nuance before responding; or never finishing more than about 10% of his meal at a restaurant, because he’s either too intrigued listening to someone else’s story or too involved in telling one of his own, and he simply forgets about eating.
Maker, now at Division III St. Thomas University in Minnesota, flew out to Boston ahead of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals between the Celtics and Bucks. “I didn’t tell him I was coming [beforehand]. I said, ‘Hey, I just want a quick hug after the game.’ He said, ‘Are you kidding me? No way [that’s the extent of it].’ So we met the next morning — before I flew back to Minneapolis — for a cup of coffee, and we went to his office and spent two hours together.
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