Ime Udoka and Will Hardy go way back, and they continue to push each other forward
HOUSTON — Where would Will Hardy be if not for Ime Udoka?
There are so many people in Hardy’s past that have had an impact on his coaching career, especially those he shared time with as a member of the San Antonio Spurs’ coaching staff. But, Udoka played an especially important role in Hardy becoming the head coach of the Utah Jazz.
Udoka, now head coach of the Houston Rockets, was actually a player on the Spurs’ roster when Hardy started an internship in San Antonio.
“The mental sparring that goes on between assistants, that helps you formulate what you like, what you don’t like and what you actually think.” — Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy
“He was my contest guy pregame and in my warmups,” Udoka remembered fondly prior to the Jazz’s recent game against Houston. “He was getting hit in the face and all that and then I watched him work his way up to video coordinator when I was an assistant. Then when I moved on to Philly, he took the bench spot.”
After retiring from playing in 2012, Udoka joined the Spurs’ coaching staff under Gregg Popovich. Udoka left San Antonio and took an assistant coaching position with the Philadelphia 76ers in 2019, then moved to the coaches bench with the Brooklyn Nets the following year. In 2021, Udoka was hired to be the head coach of the Boston Celtics and that’s when he called Hardy.
That’s the nuts and bolts of their history, but all the details in between are much more rich and illuminating.
When Hardy first got into the video room for the Spurs, he wasn’t really thinking about what his future would hold.
“I don’t think I had aspirations of being anything more than that,” he said. “I don’t mean that I didn’t have goals, but you’re just trying to do your job. We have guys in our video room now that are doing the same thing. A lot of pinch-me moments.”
Hardy would talk to his friends, most of whom were fresh out of college like he was at the time, and they would mention what they were doing at work — in their much more normal jobs. For Hardy, it felt like a dream that he was telling his friends that he was contesting Udoka’s shots during warmups, or guarding Tim Duncan or working to help Manu Ginobili rehab from an injury by running through drills with him.
Once Udoka returned to the Spurs as a part of the coaching staff, Hardy was working in the film room and he started a document — one that still exists and informs his work — that he filled with ideas about offense and defense and plays and schemes, some serious and some a little crazy.
“At the time, I didn’t know what it was for,” Hardy said. “I think probably about three years into doing it, I kind of knew what it was for. It was like, ‘Oh, this is in case one day I ever get an opportunity and I’ll have all these crazy things written down.’”
What went into the document was often born through conversations with the other members of the coaching staff.
As much as Popovich was an influence on Hardy (and so much of the NBA coaching world), much of Hardy’s time was spent tossing ideas around with Udoka and other assistants.
As Udoka has watched Hardy embark on his own head coaching journey and observed how he’s coached the Jazz, he’s reminded of those days in San Antonio, those days of talking through ideas that they knew Popovich wouldn’t go for, ideas that would go into Hardy’s running document.
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“We’d thrown things at the wall for years,” Udoka said. “Where Pop was pound the rock and kind of grind it out, do the same thing, we were a little bit younger and more innovative. You can see that.”
Udoka sees those conversations in the variations of zone defense that Hardy uses and in his ATOs (after timeout plays) and everything in between.
“It’s not surprising that Ime recognizes some of that,” Hardy said with a laugh. “Some of the stuff that we did in Boston. He’d bring it up and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I remember when we talked about this and you really liked it and Pop wouldn’t do it.’ And it’s not that it was right or wrong. We all have to do this in a way that’s authentic to ourselves.”
Udoka saw Hardy’s ambition and creativity and how well he interacted with players of all ages and backgrounds and that was the type of person he wanted on his staff when he got the head coaching gig in Boston.
It was scary for Hardy to leave the security of things in San Antonio. Then there was his wife, her family, which was based in San Antonio, their young daughter and another on the way. Though scary, the choice was easy.
Udoka told Hardy how he was much more prepared to take over his own program once he branched out from the Spurs and told Hardy that he’d gain that experience and confidence as well.
It was just one year later, when Hardy was confident and ready, that the Jazz came calling.
“Those conversations, sitting in Ime’s office … you’re talking about something like, ‘Hey, let’s draw this up, let’s talk about this, and then you go back and you put it in your notebook, maybe it doesn’t go in the notebook,” Hardy said. “The mental sparring that goes on between assistants, that helps you formulate what you like, what you don’t like and what you actually think.”
It was many of the conversations with Udoka that helped to inspire Hardy and without the push to leave San Antonio and branch out and experience something new, Hardy may not have been ready in the summer of 2022.
