The Jazz have signed head coach Will Hardy to a contract extension, the group announced Monday in a press release.
In accordance with the Jazz, the brand new deal is a multiyear settlement that can preserve Hardy underneath membership management by means of 2031.
Workforce proprietor Ryan Smith and CEO Danny Ainge each issued statements on the transfer, with Smith referring to Hardy as an “unimaginable chief” and a “robust ambassador” for the franchise.
“He has been an amazing companion to Danny, (basic supervisor) Justin (Zanik), and me,” Smith stated. “There isn’t any one we’d relatively have main us to our final aim of profitable 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 powerful 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 switch 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 underneath Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.
Hardy’s file throughout his three years as Utah’s head coach is underwhelming. The group has gone simply 85-161 (.346) throughout that stretch and hasn’t made the playoffs or the play-in match.
Nevertheless, 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 group bottomed out at 17-65 this previous season.
The brand new deal for Hardy suggests the Jazz just like the job he has executed in the course of the membership’s retooling years and need to give him an opportunity to see by means of the following phases of Utah’s rebuilding course of.
