Snyder works his way back to top after fall from grace
SALT LAKE CITY — Quin Snyder still looks young. A little rougher than the old days, a little more gaunt than when he made the ladies swoon as a Duke point guard and a boy-wonder coach at Missouri. But still young.
Hard to believe that Snyder is a contemporary of his coaching rival in this Thunder-Jazz Western Conference playoff series.
Billy Donovan appears to be from a different generation than Snyder. But Snyder, 51, is only 17 months, to the day, younger than Donovan. After Donovan quarterbacked Providence to the 1987 Final Four, Snyder did the same for Duke in 1988 and 1989.
Donovan was a prodigy himself. Major college head coach at 28. Coaching in the Final Four at 34. Donovan’s life and career have been relatively smooth. Providence. Florida. Thunder.
Snyder’s life and career have been bumpy since leaving Duke. Scandal at Missouri, where he was hired at 32, in the Elite Eight at 35 and gone at 39. Anonymity in basketball outposts. Skepticism in Utah.
But the Jazz enter Game 3 Saturday night tied 1-1 with the Thunder and sporting perhaps the bestcoached team in the NBA.
Utah sports no allstars. Its best player is a defensive specialist. Its most reliable scorer is a rookie. The Jazz wins by playing unselfishly and competitively. And win Utah does. The Jazz went 30-8 after Rudy Gobert’s return from injury.
It’s a tribute to the once-Boy Wonder, who engendered only doubt when he got the job four years ago.
And that’s OK. The guy who hired Snyder wasn’t sold himself, only a few years earlier.
When Dennis Lindsey joined the Spurs as assistant general manager in 2007, his boss, R.C. Buford, asked what Lindsey thought of Snyder, who had just been hired to coach the D-League Austin Toros.
“I’m skeptical,” Lindsey said.
Snyder’s Duke pedigree. His Missouri scandal. What made anyone think that would translate to minor-league basketball, where you might have the best talent in the league one month and the worst talent in the league the next? What made anyone think that a Blue Devil blueblood would adapt to a life of bus rides and 6 a.m. commercial flights after night games and practicing in community gymnasiums?
But Lindsey says he spoke out of ignorance. He didn’t know that Snyder was a coaching whiz. Didn’t know that exposure to some of the greatest minds in the history of the game— Mike Krzyzewski, Larry Brown, Gregg Popovich— had paid off. Didn’t know that Snyder was hungry to prove himself after the Missouri debacle.
Snyder spent three years coaching in the basketball bushes against the likes of the Fort Wayne Mad Ants and the Bakersfield Jam and the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.
On the June day in 2014 that Lindsey hired a Snyder, Lindsey said, “maybe the most humbling experience in his career was the best one.”
Snyder went from the swanky Seattle suburb of Mercer Island to Duke. He ended up marrying Brown’s daughter, who attended North Carolina, and Snyder after his playing days joined his father-in-law on the Los Angeles Clippers staff.
The marriage didn’t last, but Snyder’s coaching career did. He went back to Duke and spent six years with Coach K before Missouri came calling.
At Mizzou, Snyder was successful early and a disaster late. He coached in two of the most memorable games of recent generations in Oklahoma.
On Feb. 5, 2001, Snyder’s Tigers lost to OSU 69-66 at Gallagher-Iba Arena, the Cowboys’ first game since the plane crash that killed 10 members of their traveling party nine days earlier.
A year later, Snyder coached upstart Missouri to the NCAA West Regional final, where OU beat back Mizzou 81-75 to reach the Final Four.
The Sooners were elated. But so were the Tigers. They thought they had the coach of their dreams. Snyder had two graduate degrees from Duke (law and MBA), the Krzyzewski connection and was the total package.
But it didn’t last. NCAA probation soon followed, then legal trouble swirled around star recruit Ricky Clemons. Rumors ran wild. Clemons was jailed for domestic abuse, and jailhouse visits by the university president’s wife and a Missouri athletic administrator were recorded and eventually released to the public, in which both ripped the basketball coaching staff. Snyder’s teams struggled on the court, administration support fled and in mid-season 2005-06, Snyder resigned.
Sixteen months later, he resurfaced in the NBA Developmental League.
“Experience is what you make of it,” Snyder said the other day before a playoff game. “I think I had the opportunity in the D League to get exposed to a lot, particularly being with the Spurs. So I got to see a lot, and got a lot of experience in a very short period of time. You get exposed to a lot. You learn a lot.
“You make mistakes. You make mistakes in the D League, no one knows about them. So you learn as a coach. And I’ve been fortunate that the players that I’ve had a chance to coach have really helped me grow as a coach. I’m just trying to do the best job I can. There’s nothing special about where I’m at. My road, my path has been different than some, but it’s been a good one for me.”
Phil Jackson, George Karl and Flip Saunders all cut their coaching chops in minor league basketball. It’s not the traditional path. But it works for some.
The NBA noticed Snyder’s penchant for player development. The 76ers hired Snyder as an assistant coach. The next year, it was the Lakers, where he met fellow assistant Ettore Messina. Messina then became head coach of famed CKSA Moscow and took Snyder with him. Messina now is Popovich’s chief lieutenant in San Antonio. Snyder returned to the NBA in 2013, working for another Pop protégé, Mike Budenholzer.
And when the Jazz fired coach Tyrone Corbin, Lindsey, too, remembered his San Antonio roots.
That’s what Sam Presti did when he first was handed the reins of the Seattle SuperSonics franchise. Presti turned to the Spurs and hired a Popovich assistant, P.J. Carlesimo. Didn’t work out; Carlesimo lasted one year in Seattle and only 13 games in OKC. He was fired in November 2008 after a 1-12 record in the Thunder’s maiden season.
The Lindsey hire of Snyder was a little more inspired. Utah went 38-44 in Snyder’s first season, a 13-game improvement, then 40-42 two years ago. Last season, the Jazz was 51-31 and won a playoff series for the first time in seven years.
When Gordon Hayward spurned the Jazz and signed with Boston, Utah rallied around rookie Donovan Mitchell and the defensive mentality Snyder instilled with Gobert as anchor.
Think of all of Krzyzewski’s many protégés. Chris Collins. Jeff Capel. Johnny Dawkins. Mike Brey. Tommy Amaker. Steve Wojciechowski. Bobby Hurley. Who could have guessed that Snyder would emerge as the strongest branch of the Coach K tree?
Snyder doesn’t like to talk about the past. He’s shot down Missouri questions long before this playoff series. But what else is there to say?
Tough times at Mizzou knocked him down. But Snyder got back up in the best possible way. He worked himself back to success. The Boy Wonder is all grown up.