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SALT LAKE CITY — "This is our era," Will Hardy boldly declared in a Utah Jazz promo video commemorating the franchise's 50th season.
Sounds good. Except for, y'know, nobody having the slightest idea yet whether that will wind up being a good thing.
Thursday night's 124-121 victory over the Rockets in the final home game of the 2023-24 season snapped a 13-game losing streak for the team and elicited an outpouring of good vibes mania.
Whether the win will prove to be a microcosm of things to come — as was mentioned Thursday night — remains decidedly undecided.
The Jazz's future is opaque, no matter how much they hope for this particular outcome to be a signpost of hope.
"It's been, obviously, a hard couple of weeks," Hardy said. "You guys don't get to see how they are behind the scenes, how engaged they've been at practice and in film sessions, how they haven't pointed fingers, or folded emotionally, mentally. I thought that showed itself tonight — just the desperation the team was playing with."
Desperation became a common refrain in Hardy's postgame analysis, and was a theme parroted by his players in the locker room afterward.
There are, after all, myriad players with expiring contracts, with uncertain futures, with careers in the NBA not guaranteed beyond this weekend's road-trip finale against the L.A. Clippers and Golden State Warriors.
"This league can sort of fool you into thinking that you're secure," Hardy said. "We have a couple of players in our locker room who would tell you that that's just not the case. They were first-round picks, some high picks, and ended up in the G League. … I sit here as a coach understanding the same thing. You know, I don't have a 25-year contract.
"So we all need to be desperate with how we approach this every single day and not take it for granted and say, 'Oh, I'll try harder next year,'" he added. "That's really selling ourselves short."
That's a significant sentiment, considering the position the organization finds itself in.
What is the front office's level of desperation right now? Have they taken this season for granted under the premise that they'll try harder at winning next year?
Everyone in the Delta Center on Thursday night understands what has happened and what is happening.
The Donovan Mitchell/Rudy Gobert iteration of the team was deemed to have peaked below championship contention, and thus was dismantled.
Last year's team was expected to be awful, only for newcomer Lauri Markkanen and holdover Mike Conley to unexpectedly be simply too good for the team to bottom out. And so that plucky roster was dismantled.
This year's team got off to the poor start the decision-makers envisioned, only to start coming together midway through the season and, once again, find themselves unexpectedly approaching decent. And so they were, once again, dismantled.
What's the fan base's level of urgency at this point? They comprehend the stated rationale for tanking and thus retaining a second consecutive top-10 pick. But are they on board with it? Do they accept or at least tolerate it? There seems to be a not-insignificant contingent who are already quite weary of it. Who, frankly, are sick of it.
That apparently extends to the team, as well, to some degree, if we're reading between the lines of Hardy's response to a query about his emotional state in the aftermath of finally ending the 13-game slide.
"Relief. I wish I could say that it was joyous, but you guys interact with me a lot — I don't seem very joyous right now," he said. "I can feel that, I'm definitely relieved. And there's a lot of stress probably left out there on the court tonight."
That goes for everyone.
"Playing perfect and playing pretty is not necessarily important to me," Hardy said. "And I don't think that's who we need to be in order to win. There are things we would like to be prettier, but if you play imperfect, but you play that hard every night, I do believe that more good will happen than bad."
Grit is, indeed, a fine quality for an NBA team to possess, but your team inevitably has a glass ceiling to it if there isn't a corresponding level of talent, as well.
About that …
CEO of basketball operations Danny Ainge said in a new video played Thursday night in the Delta Center that his goal is to provide hope — to the players, to the coaches, to the fans.
Sounds good. Provided, y'know, that the Jazz finally, at last, show some of the desperation off the court that its players showed on it.
