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SALT LAKE CITY — In the final seconds of Saturday night's Game 1 matchup, Quin Snyder faced the most important decision of his Jazz head coaching career to this point.
He did nothing.
It was the right call.
With 13 seconds left and Chris Paul just having tied the game for the Los Angeles Clippers, Snyder chose not to call a timeout, allowing Joe Johnson to bring the ball up the floor. Joe Ingles came over for the screen, leading to a switch of the defensively weak Jamal Crawford onto Johnson. From there, with the 5 seconds that remained, Johnson got Crawford off balance, drove to the lane and finished with a soft floater at the buzzer.
With a timeout there, the Clippers get their defense set and they pull Crawford, one of the worst defenders in the league. And they know to key on Johnson and Hayward, both of who had scored important baskets down the stretch.
It's probably an overstep to call the moment a watershed one for Snyder, it's just one game in a playoff series. But it is a reflection of the detail-oriented approach and discipline of the Jazz's head coach.
Snyder has a long and varied resume. He actually started his coaching career with the Clippers, acting as an assistant coach with the NBA franchise in 1992-93, fresh off his playing career at Duke. Then, he moved to an assistantship position with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, moving to full assistant and eventually associate head coach at Duke. That served as a stepping stone for his move to Missouri, where he served as that team's head coach for seven seasons.
From there, it was off to Texas to serve as the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs' D-League franchise, the Austin Toros. He compiled more wins in his three years than any other coach in the D-League and was then hired to the NBA level as a player development coach under Doug Collins in Philadelphia. One year later, he was hired as an assistant under Mike Brown in Los Angeles, this time as a Laker.
"For me, personally, being around Kobe (Bryant) was a big thing," Snyder said. "(former Lakers general manager) Mitch Kupchak was someone that I admired, and he was willing to talk to me and give me some advice from a general manager perspective, which I've found very useful moving forward."
From there, Snyder made an unusual move: he went across the Atlantic to be the lead assistant for fellow Lakers coach Ettore Messina in Moscow, Russia, for CSKA Moscow, one of the most well-known international clubs.
After a year there, it was a year as Atlanta's lead assistant coach under Mike Budenholzer, a former Spurs colleague. And finally, the Jazz's head coaching spot opened up in 2014. The Jazz interviewed other candidates, but Snyder was always the lead candidate thanks to his player development resume.
And now he's led the Jazz to three straight years of incremental improvement. After the Jazz won just 25 games in the year before his hiring, he won 38 games in his first year as an NBA head coach, 40 wins the subsequent season and now 51 games this year. His experience this week was his first experience as an NBA head coach in the playoffs, and so far, he's passed the test.
Gordon Hayward said the team has noticed Snyder's varied experiences.
"He's done it all. Because he's done it all, everybody respects him as a coach," Hayward said. "We've embraced his coaching style, his philosophy, his system, and I think it's really helped us."
So what is that coaching style?
"His philosophy is definitely team basketball, sharing, team chemistry, playing together," Boris Diaw explained. "Relying on each other on defense also."
That reliance on each other extends to his players. Snyder talks frequently about how he asks his players for advice or guidance on what he should do in a certain situation. He builds the system incorporating the feedback given from players up and down the roster. Stories of 1 a.m., 2 a.m. or even 3 a.m. texts aren't uncommon from former and current players of Snyder's.
"Yeah, he's a coach that supports his players, for sure," Diaw said. "I think the term 'players' coach,' I think you can apply that to him, in the sense that every player trusts him and can talk to him pretty easily."
That trust in the players showed in Game 1's pivotal moment, the non-timeout that let Johnson shine in the game's final seconds. And while Game 2 was more difficult, and the Jazz still face Game 3 without Rudy Gobert, Snyder isn't worried.
"I've been to Russia. I've worked in Moscow. I've flown to Samara," Snyder said. "There's not a whole lot you can throw at me that's going to discourage me."
