How will Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy use Jaren Jackson Jr., Vince Williams Jr., and John Konchar? Here’s what he says.

Utah traded for the two-time All-Star this week.

Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy knows the acquisition of Jaren Jackson Jr. is a big step forward for his franchise.

Now comes the fun part, though: integrating Jackson’s unique skill set into the rest of the team. The 26-year-old former Defensive Player of the Year joins an already big frontcourt with Lauri Markkanen and Walker Kessler. Jackson will be used to a different style of ball than what the Jazz play as well.

On deadline day, I got the chance to talk one-on-one with Hardy about how he plans on using his newest star — along with his other acquisitions from Memphis, Vince Williams Jr. and John Konchar.

You’ve got a big frontcourt now with Jaren, Walker and Lauri, how do you plan on that working out defensively?

“Size and athleticism is great on both sides of the ball. I think that Jaren is an elite defensive player, being a former Defensive Player of the Year. I think you also have seen that a lot of his best moments have been when he’s played alongside a center. But, you know, he can play center for pockets of the game, and I think that will be part of the plan.

“More than anything, I think you have a lot of versatility with Lauri, Jaren and Walker, because in theory, you’ll have pockets where all three of them are on the court, and then you can also have a lot of the game where you have two out of the three on the court and you’re just kind of spinning them.

“The size defensively, the ability to protect the rim, the ability to rebound with all three of those guys, I think is really exciting.”

How about offensively?

“I don’t think there’s any doubt in my mind that on the offensive side, they’ll fit together. We’ve played with Lauri as the quote-unquote ‘three’ before during my time here, and Jaren is a really talented player.

“I think it’s going to be good to get him in the building and around the team so that we can become and I can become more familiar with what his capabilities really are. You have all these preconceived notions of players when you coach against them, but they’re being asked to play within some type of a system wherever they are, and so it’ll be fun to explore those things with him and make him a part of the conversation in terms of what he thinks he can offer.”

You do all the off-ball screening stuff — as much or more than anyone in the league. Do you think that works and fits well with what Jaren does?

“Yeah, I think he can definitely fit into that. You know, we may have to adjust the dosage of it in different moments, but that’s going to be — my responsibility with our staff is working through those things. But play off-ball, you don’t just have to be the guy running off the screen. You can be a screener and a cutter, and I think Jaren is fully capable of all those things. You’ve watched him punish switches for a long time. And I think with the amount of teams that are switching off-ball screens, if he’s a screener and draws a good matchup, they can roll those guys down into small space and punish them.

“It may be some stuff that Jaren hasn’t been asked to do a ton of to this point in his career. But we’ve seen with a lot of guys, like, it doesn’t mean they’re not capable. You know, John Collins stands out to me as somebody that didn’t play a ton of off-ball early in his career, and he was great at it with us. It took him a couple of months to fully adjust to what the reads were and to get more comfortable. But there have been plenty of guys who we’ve had who’ve shown the ability to do it when you hadn’t necessarily seen it before.”

What are you most excited about what Vince and John can bring?

“Both those guys are competitive, physical adults. They’ve shown the ability to contribute to winning. They’ve both also shown that they’ll do the dirty work. They do little things to help you win. They’re physical, they compete. They’re guys that haven’t been super high usage players, but impact the game when they play.”