John Beilein was ready to put his feet up. The evening was supposed to be an opportunity to bask in Michigan’s latest recruiting victory. Tim Hardaway Jr. was playing the summer AAU circuit before his senior year of high school, and Beilein had traveled to see one of his games for the first time since securing Hardaway’s commitment.
“I was so excited about watching him play,” Beilein remembers.
Much to his surprise, he watched his guy sit instead. Confusion crept in as an entire game passed without Hardaway setting foot on the court. “Did I not see something?” Beilein thought to himself. “What did I miss?”
The disappointment had a way of being informative, though. One of Beilein’s recruiting practices was to observe how a player responded emotionally to various situations on the court, on the bench, in the huddle. He spent much of that 2009 game monitoring Hardaway’s demeanor.
“He handled the whole thing well,” Beilein said. “I’m sure he was upset a little bit, but some guys would sulk at the end of the bench (in that situation). He sat there clapping and doing everything right.”
Hardaway was the Nuggets’ final roster addition of the 2025 offseason, a bargain in free agency for the veteran minimum. He was almost an afterthought next to the surprise fireworks of a trade for Cam Johnson, the feel-good reunion with Bruce Brown and the addition of a legitimate backup center in Jonas Valanciunas.
But at the 15-game mark, Hardaway’s impact off the bench has been the loudest of any newcomer’s. He entered this weekend as one of seven players in the NBA shooting 45% or better from 3-point range (45.3%) on at least 75 attempts. He was averaging 11.1 points, a perimeter scoring jolt that complements Brown and Valanciunas to form Denver’s most capable second unit in years.
“If you’re a guy that you go Saturday morning and hoop with your friends, our team is fun to play pickup with,” coach David Adelman said. “Tim’s a guy you’d like to play pickup basketball with.”
“That bench unit, it’s a lot of weapons, a lot of guys who care, who know how to play those minutes, who know what their role is,” Jokic said when asked about the biggest difference between the 2025-26 Nuggets and the previous iteration, which lost his rest minutes by 9.3 points per 100 possessions. “… They give us calmness.”
The scorching start is nice, but it isn’t the only reason the Nuggets viewed Hardaway as an ideal role player for their pursuit of a second championship. Basketball logic says he’s unlikely to stay this hot all season. That’s life as a shooter.
Equally important to Denver is how he handles the arc of the season, including the low points — with persistent confidence in his scoring ability when he’s on the floor and level-headed maturity when he’s off it. Adelman has publicly and privately preached the inflated importance of selflessness on a deep roster, where playing time can be sporadic.
Beilein’s memory of that summer game reverberates 16 years later.
“Here’s an NBA Hall of Famer’s son not even getting in a run,” the former Michigan Wolverines coach said. “People would think he would’ve been entitled and would sulk. This dude earned everything.”
Hardaway went through his growing pains as a teammate when he was young, just in other ways. Jon Horford, who roomed with him at Michigan, described him as goofy off the court but deeply intense in the heat of any competition. “It was a big personality clash,” but within himself, as Horford put it. Hardaway had an edge to him.
At team dinners in high school, when classmates challenged Hardaway to see who could finish their soda fastest, “he was all up in that,” former Miami Palmetto High coach Chris Brown said. “It was the fire that he had.”
When he got hot during games, Beilein learned that “you stayed the hell out of the way. He was focused. So I wouldn’t say anything to him. He got in his own zone.” The image that endures for Beilein is from a game against archrival Ohio State, when Hardaway buried a series of “breathtaking” NBA-range 3-pointers to fuel a late comeback win.
Hardaway occasionally gave in to the fire. “There were times in practice where he would get upset if somebody missed a shot, stuff like that,” Brown said. Hardaway’s instinct was to respond by wanting to do everything himself. He had to learn to trust his teammates and build stronger relationships with them.
But the intensity was also symptomatic of a self-determination that enabled him to transcend his recruiting status. Despite his dad’s NBA prominence, Hardaway was somewhat unheralded in high school, hence the seat he occupied on his AAU team’s bench. He was classified by some metrics as only a three-star. Beilein remembers a recruiting visit to one of his high school games in Miami that also featured Brandon Knight on the opposing team.
Florida, Florida State and Miami all had coaches in the building to see Knight. Hardaway met the moment with a good performance. Almost too good.
“I’m in the stands thinking, ‘Man, I hope nobody changes course and turns to go to Tim,’” Beilein said.
He held his breath after the game as he waited outside Hardaway’s locker room. When he saw his competitors standing outside Knight’s, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“I think he loved that we saw him as an emerging talent, and others saw him as Tim Hardaway’s son,” Beilein said. “We saw him as, ‘The DNA is there man, but this kid is young, still growing, lean, and he can shoot.’ Sometimes it was: Can’t shoot? Don’t recruit. We wanted shooters.”
Hardaway has been a streaky one throughout his career, but he has never shied away from hunting 3s. When he scales back, it’s calculated, not out of reluctance. He went through a gnarly slump early in his college career. Beilein suggested trimming a little fat from his shot selection — just from eight 3-point attempts per game down to six.
Hardaway did that and shot a solid 37.4% in his final season of college, helping Michigan reach the national championship game.
Currently in Denver, he’s attempting his fewest 3s per game since 2016-17. He’s making a career-high percentage.
“The good news was he could get his own shot,” Beilein said. “The bad news was he could get his own shot. But he was so coachable. He would adapt in a minute.”
“A lot of people get destroyed by that mentally and can’t handle it,” Horford said. “Tim obviously could, because he’s playing in the best league in the world still.”
Horford and Hardaway shared the distinction of having a current or former NBA player in their immediate family — and the more common distinction of being broke college kids regardless. The name, image and likeness era was still a few years away. And Tim Hardaway Sr. and Al Horford weren’t exactly bankrolling them.
Living with two other teammates in a four-person apartment, they often tried to bring home extra food from the team training table to cover more meals. Then they would gripe with Beilein about the NCAA’s antiquated rules: “Isn’t it (messed) up that you’re allowed to go to any restaurant in the city and get it comped for free, but if we did that, it’s an NCAA violation?” one of them would point out.
Hardaway and Beilein reminisced about those times just last week. Age had softened Hardaway’s perspective a bit.
“I said Timmy, with the NIL, you wouldn’t have to share a pizza with four guys late at night,” Beilein said. “He’s laughing about it, and he says, ‘That was such an important part of my life, going through college as just a regular guy and learning to make it on just the scholarship.’ Which is still a great thing. But when he was playing, we couldn’t put cream cheese on the bagel.”
If it sounds old-school, that’s because it is. Hardaway blinked and became “unc” to his teammates in Denver. He’s the oldest player on the roster at 33. The edge hasn’t disappeared. But he’s spent almost two decades harnessing it, enough to stay in the league without compromising his relationships with teammates.
“I’ve had a lot of great vets, and he reminds me of all of them,” Peyton Watson said. “Just very routine-based, very professional and loves the game. Outside of that, just one of the funniest dudes ever, always keeping everybody around and smiling. Bringing the team together for team bonding.”
That was the attitude Beilein first saw at that AAU game so many years ago — and it’s one that has marked Hardaway’s career ever since.
“From the beginning,” Beilein said, “he played like he was beyond his years.”
