The Jazz might be tanking, but they aren’t creating a culture of losing

PHILADELPHIA — One of the concerns that fans have when an NBA team is trudging through tanking seasons a rebuild, is the potential for that team to develop a losing culture.

Being in Philadelphia, it feels like the perfect time to address this concern, which is valid if you use broad strokes and lump all tanking and rebuilding teams into one category.

But not all tanking teams are created equally.

To Jazz head coach Will Hardy, he understands why someone from the outside might have these concerns, but importantly, he believes it is only people from the outside who are worried about it.

“That sounds like somebody who’s not there every day,” Hardy said. “Let’s take the Nuggets game, for example. We lost that game at the end, but in no way did our team behave or play like losers. We just lost. And there is a difference. And so I think it’s easy, from a distance, to say you’re creating a losing culture, or you’re building losing habits, but that’s just simply not true.“

The Jazz, even with Lauri Markkanen, Walker Kessler and Jaren Jackson Jr. sidelined were able to take the Denver Nuggets to the last moments of Monday night’s game, before ultimately losing 128-125.

Then, on Wednesday, the shorthanded Jazz took the Philadelphia 76ers down to the wire, eventually falling 106-102.

I’ve seen what it’s like in a locker room where the expectation is losing, when a roster has been built for the short term with players who are not capable of winning and where the future of the franchise is thrust upon one pair of shoulders. I covered that Sixers team.

That’s not the same as what is happening in Utah.

The “Process Era” Sixers rosters were littered with players who would never be able to make a successful NBA career after their stint with the Sixers. They were chosen because they could pass as NBA players but never rise to the level of the competition. That was the whole point.

It was hard for the players to buy into anything the coaching or training staff was saying because they knew they weren’t in the longterm plans. They knew that management had chosen them because they were less than their competitors. It’s not tactful to say it like this, but those teams were made to be losers.

Those locker room in Philly after losses during those years were bleak. There was rarely joy. There was no trust. And for the most part, those players did not go on to have success anywhere else in the NBA (there are of course exceptions like T.J. McConnell and Robert Covington).

That’s not to say it was a bad strategy. There was method to the madness. The point was to land as many top picks as possible and the Sixers did a lot of that, and it put a lot of pressure on Joel Embiid as the Sixers tried to move toward winning — pressure that remains.

Think about what it must have been like to be a player on a team that chose you because you aren’t good enough. Think back to what it was like for Stephen Silas in Houston, near tears during post-game media availability, when he couldn’t make a difference and didn’t have the trust of his players.

The Jazz have not used the same blueprint, and I can attest to the fact that the feeling is completely different when compared to what I saw during the tanking years in Philly and compared to other rebuilding situations around the league.

The Jazz players completely understand what management has been doing the last few years, and at the same time they feel that the coaching staff and everyone else has their best interests in mind. They believe that they are building toward something better and that if they prove their mettle, they can be a part of something great in Utah.

The fact that the Jazz are benching players when they’re winning games, manipulating injury reports and massaging lineups is proof that the there are players worth benching in order to lose. It’s proof that this is not a culture based on losing but instead a team that is willing to use every avenue available to get the results that are needed.

The front office and the coaching staff have invested a lot of time and care into the development of players they are hoping will be a part of the Jazz’s long term success. And there is joy in this locker room. There are friendships and the players cheer for each other and they believe in their coach, even trust him.

“They know the standards they’re being held to in everything they do,” Hardy said. “It’s not just about making and missing shots. It’s not just about what happens in the 48 minutes tonight. Winning cultures are about everything else — how you approach the work every day, how you take care of your body every day, how you treat your teammates, how you interact with the coaches, how you interact with the medical staff."

There are behavioral and and professional expectations that the Jazz coaching and executive staff have for the players because they expect to move forward with them, because they expect for them to be able to impact winning.

I’ve seen what it looks like when the hope is hard to come by. This is not that team.