Pair of rebuilding squads focus on positives
SALT LAKE CITY — As Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy was completing his first week at the helm of the Jazz’s restart, Rockets coach Stephen Silas was asked about his own first week.
Silas let out one of those laughs that are used when something is not really funny, but laughing is a better alternative than crying, with awkward but understanding chuckles filling the room.
Silas had begun his tenure with the Rockets with a rushed and delayed training camp because of COVID. His star player, James Harden, was a late arrival and pushing for an exit. Much of the team was unavailable or suspended because of health and safety protocols, and the first game was postponed because the Rockets did not have enough players to play it.
With the exception of a brief surge a month and a franchise-altering trade later, little got better.
“Are we really asking that question?” Silas said. When he was invited to instead discuss Hardy’s very different start to his coaching career, Silas obliged. But when he did, he repeatedly went back to the ways he has become determined to influence his young team through the trials of the rebuild, just as Hardy would when he addressed the challenges of guiding the retooled Jazz.
Their first weeks could not have been more different. Hardy’s Jazz won their first three games before losing to the Rockets in Houston on Monday, the first game of the homeand-home series between the teams resuming Wednesday in Salt Lake City.
There was a lesson from the start of Silas’ Rockets tenure that remains valuable, and that Hardy also cited as important in his first season as a head coach.
“I’m going to stay positive with the group,” Silas said, “because if I’m not positive, they won’t be positive.”
Silas had grown to be so aware of his influence on a leader’s attitude on his players, that when given the customary question about the Astros’ success and particularly manager Dusty Baker, he struck on the same themes.
“He has an innate ability to keep pressure on those guys without making it a pressure-filled environment,” Silas said. “That’s really hard to do.”
In contrast to when he took over a team with Harden and Russell Westbrook, Silas has had to find other measures of success. That too informs his players’ perspective.
“It’s difficult because as a coach you’re programmed for the wins and losses, right?” Silas said. “We haven’t had a bunch of wins since I’ve been here. So, the focus shifts to success in other ways, where Jalen Green is a first-team all-rookie guy, Jae’Sean Tate is a firstteam all-rookie guy, Kevin
Porter Jr. goes from like not even on a basketball team to a solid part of our starting lineup and getting a new contract. Alperen Sengun, the development of our guys and growth of our guys makes it a lot easier.”
The Rockets are the NBA’s second-youngest team, with an average age of 23.58 to start the season (the Thunder had an average age of 23.14) and second least experienced team (also behind the Thunder.)
The determination to embrace the process might start with the coach and front office, but has reached the locker room, which could be much of the point.
“There’s no losses with this team,” Green said. “We’re all in a rebuild right now. It’s either a win or it’s a learning lesson.”
That can be easier to embrace now that the Rockets have young players that they believe will be the core of success. But even when things fell apart, the attitude had to come from the new coach.
“He kept his mindset positive for the group,” said K.J. Martin, the most
tenured Rockets player (he was drafted a few months before Tate signed as a free agent) other than Eric Gordon. “It helps. It helps a lot. Every day in practice, going into games, having that energy, staying upbeat, we feed off that. He’s usually smiling at everything so it kind of rubs off.”
The Jazz rank 16th in average age. They are 14th most experienced. But they have been rebuilt, with seven new veterans and five rookies. The veterans play the bulk of the minutes. But even with very different circumstances, Hardy said he also must first create the right “environment.”
“Trust is part of the game and in order to build trust, you have to build that first foundation of your relationship,” Hardy said. “I think as a coach, and our coaching staff in general, we’ve really focused on the environment every day. We used that word a lot, how we set up the right environment for our team every day.
“We recognized early on this is a whole new thing. It’s a new staff. It’s a new team. When I speak to the team, definitely always try to think about, ‘What is the message?’ And not only think about what you say, but how you say it.”
Silas did not have the benefit, or luxury of getting off to a fast start, with losses in four of their first six games. Last season, the Rockets began 1-16. The Jazz were able to give a new coach a running start.
“They’re well-coached. You can see that,” Silas said. “They have veteran guys on the floor with know-how. You see (Mike) Conley out there with (Jordan) Clarkson. We know Kelly (Olynyk,) how smart he is with or without the basketball. They have guys off the bench, Rudy Gay. They’re a well put together team full of veteran guys who have played five, six, 16 years in the league. It’s all coming together for them.
“To have your first week be a 3-0 week, when nobody expected much, gives you coaching confidence. Your coaching confidence can go up and down and up and down. It’s good for him to feel that right from the start, where you’re 3-0, you feel like, “OK, I feel like I’m in a good spot, I feel like I have good group, I’m doing things the right way.’”
Silas has come to feel the same way, and as important, to create that feeling around him.
“To have a good group that you enjoy being around every day makes it to where I can have a smile on my face,” he said. “I’m generally … a positive person, but yeah, there are hard days and there will be hard days to come. But we have the right group and we have the right ownership and we have the right management. Especially this year, you can kind of see it where it’s going to be good.”