Can Will Hardy help Celtics coach Ime Udoka bring the Spurs culture to Boston?
Will Hardy is one of those names that has been popping up on the periphery of coaching searches over the past few years. He interviewed with the Knicks, Pacers and Thunder in recent coaching cycles as he moved up the bench in San Antonio. Gregg Popovichs staff produces more head coaches than just about anyone  just ask Hardys reported new boss, Ime Udoka. He is joining the Celtics coaching staff, as first reported by The Athletics Jay King. Hardy was on the Team USA staff with Udoka at the 2019 FIBA World Cup, where they worked with Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart. He joined the Spurs staff after finishing his playing career at Williams College up in the Berkshires in 2011 and worked his way up through the film room to the front of the Spurs bench in recent years. It seems almost everyone who makes the front row in San Antonio eventually gets a head coach job and while its Udokas turn now, Hardys name has popped up often as a candidate in the making. Hardy received some strong reviews in the last offseason, but at age 33, there might be some hesitancy as a top-tier head coaching candidate. When Popovich was ejected in a November game last season, he, Becky Hammon and Tim Duncan took over the rest of the game. Duncan walked away from coaching this season, so Hardy and Hammon were essentially the highest-ranking coaches below Popovich. Hardy was speculated to be a potential successor to Popovich, so he has to be getting a prime spot on the bench with the Celtics. Udoka said Monday he will look for a veteran coach for the role of associate head coach. There are plenty of people with head coaching experience on the market who would be looking at the associate coach job (the second in command) as a promotion. Hardy has the expertise and self-awareness to step into a prominent position. There have been plenty of different personalities to emerge from San Antonios ranks, but they are all known for understanding their role in supporting the players and the organization. Hardy has apparently learned the hard way to embrace that mindset. I still have a long way to go, he said in a 2020 coaching panel. Im still learning a ton every day, Im trying to improve. Im trying to tweak things. Im hard on myself. I think I fuck up all the time. Coach Pop tells me I fuck up all the time, so Im trying to continue to grow and get better as we go.  According to Hardy, former Spurs assistant GM Dennis Lindsey once told him, I want you to be seen, not heard. He spent his internship in 2010 working in the front office for longtime Spurs general manager R.C. Buford, but would work mornings on the practice court basically as a punching bag, as he put it, helping with player development work before practice. Getting dunked on all season earned him enough cache with the players and coaches to earn him a job as a video coordinator the next season. Whatever I was asked to do, I would do it, Hardy said in a coaches panel in 2020. Whatever sacrifices we have to make in life, friends, family stuff, I did whatever I could.  He spent six years in the video room, taking on increasing responsibility as the video coordinators above him in the org chart were promoted to benches around the league. He ran the teams player development efforts for three years before becoming a full assistant coach in 2016 and making his way from the video room to the front of the bench as the likes of Mike Budenholzer, Brett Brown, Jacque Vaughn, Ettore Messina, James Borrego and Ime Udoka moved on to bigger opportunities. Hardy has spoken often about the Spurs ethos of training your replacement. If you want to earn Coach Pops support to move up in the coaching world, you need to make sure your subordinate is ready to step into your role. Its why he was able to step up to fill Udokas role when the new Celtics coach left to join Brown in Philadelphia. What helped me in San Antonio was access, transparency. They let me be in film sessions. Theres pretty much an open-door policy with the assistants that you work with, Hardy told the online conference. Brett Brown, when I worked with him in the video room, I sat in his office all day and almost watching him go through his process, asking him questions, hed ask me questions, and starting to learn how he was getting to his answers. How he was evaluating a team we were going to play and how he was figuring out what he was going to do for the game plan. So I try to do that for any of the video guys that work for us now.  The challenge as the coach is to always be generous and dedicated every single day. Coaches have to be early and stay late, always having to be a resource, source of support or motivator to serve the players and their colleagues. Its a daily thing, Hardy said. Some days youre just like, Fuck, I dont want to answer questions. I just want to do my work. Theres stuff going on. But some so many coaches were and are so good to me in moments where they wanted to swat me away like a fly, so I just try to do the same with our guys.  He has to do that because for up-and-coming coaches, there is this push and pull between having to shut up and listen while needing to establish value. Hardy said he barely said anything to the players when he was starting, just waiting for opportunities when they would come for him for input and he could prove his impact in those moments. I didnt say shit. But there were three times a season where Im young, working at San Antonio, and Manu (Ginobili) would come over at practice and say, My matchup, whats he shoot from 3? And if I knew, you would get a little bit of respect, said Hardy. Oh, hes prepared, he knows his shit. So it wasnt me trying to push myself on them, it was more being consistent every day, they see Im there and Im working hard, and then trying to be as prepared as you could be for those moments where you were asked a question.  Hes obviously a much more established coach and will be empowered to have a voice with the players. But he knows how to communicate with them in a way that isnt going to be patronizing. Players are smart. They know whats possible and whats not possible, Hardy said. They know what stuff sounds good in a film session or looks good drawn on a board, but in a game that shits just fucking impossible. Ive tried to learn from our players as much as the coaches. The fact that Tim Duncan or Manu Ginobili would ever do anything that I tell them blows my mind. But that just speaks to the type of players they are.  He will likely play a key role in establishing the teams player development approach in working with the teams top stars. But his philosophy on helping the younger guys with the transition to the league underscores why he should be an ideal fit for a roster with so many recent first-round picks. We all see all this stuff all the time, these really cool looking drills where theres 19 cones and two balls and then Im gonna throw a tennis ball at you, he said. That stuff can help in certain spaces, but the psychology of working with players and helping them improve, helping them be willing to change things that have been successful. Like, guys who made it to our door, fuck, they made it to the NBA. Its been OK. It hasnt been terrible. Theyre in the NBA. So to get guys to change, theres a psychological element to it, earning their trust. Simplifying things. The learning curve for people in anything, you cant learn a new language that fast. You cant break these habits that fast.  And breaking those habits comes with a trust built from a culture Udoka and Brad Stevens will have to continue to grow. Hardy has said the biggest thing he learned from Popovich is that he isnt afraid to be the bad guy and be direct and clear with his players. Thats something Udoka has emphasized as his strength in his first week on the job. So the rest of the staff often has to serve as a cultural counterbalance in a way, pushing the players when the head coach is going easy and vice versa. A big part of our job is getting them back to level, Hardy told the conference. Sometimes youre playing four games a week. Theres not time to wallow in it. Sometimes theyre getting hard messages in a film session and we have a game that night, so we have to get them back to level. But thats the dynamic of any staff, where the personalities are all different. If we were all like Pop, wed have a problem. But if we were all happy go lucky, its all good, that would be a problem too.  At the end of the day, the culture is not about the mission statement or what goes on the whiteboard. Its about having the right people who want to exhibit those qualities every day. If youre not actually doing all those things every day, then your culture is nothing, said Hardy. So its always been about being selfless. Coach Pop says all the time, Get over yourself. It aint about you. No one person is bigger than this and that goes from him all the way down.  It looks like Hardy is joining the Celtics because Udoka knows hes the person to help ensure that culture remains in place. (Photo: Logan Riely/NBAE via Getty Images)