The Jazz have signed head coach Will Hardy to a contract extension, the workforce introduced Monday in a press launch.
In accordance with the Jazz, the brand new deal is a multiyear settlement that can hold Hardy below membership management via 2031.
Staff proprietor Ryan Smith and CEO Danny Ainge each issued statements on the transfer, with Smith referring to Hardy as an “unimaginable chief” and a “sturdy ambassador” for the franchise.
“He has been an amazing accomplice to Danny, (normal supervisor) Justin (Zanik), and me,” Smith mentioned. “There is no such thing as a one we’d slightly have main us to our final aim of successful an NBA championship right here in Utah.”
“Will’s management has been invaluable to our program,” Ainge added. “He has established a imaginative and prescient for our gamers and a robust basis of core values, aggressive habits, and progress mindset. He is without doubt one of the brightest younger coaches in our league, and we’re extremely lucky to have him.”
The Jazz employed Hardy to exchange Quin Snyder in 2022, making him the youngest head coach within the league on the time and reportedly giving him a five-year contract. Earlier than arriving in Utah, Hardy spent one season on Ime Udoka‘s teaching employees in Boston and was a longtime assistant below Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.
Hardy’s report throughout his three years as Utah’s head coach is underwhelming. The workforce has gone simply 85-161 (.346) throughout that stretch and hasn’t made the playoffs or the play-in match.
Nonetheless, the Jazz started tearing down their roster the 12 months Hardy arrived, buying and selling away Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell that offseason and parting methods with a number of extra veterans in subsequent seasons. Hardy saved Utah extra aggressive than anticipated in every of his first two years on the job, incomes Coach of the Yr votes in 2023, earlier than the workforce bottomed out at 17-65 this previous season.
The brand new deal for Hardy suggests the Jazz just like the job he has achieved in the course of the membership’s retooling years and need to give him an opportunity to see via the following phases of Utah’s rebuilding course of.
