The Quin Snyder ... Sweepstakes?
Snyder remains Utah's coach and has one season left on his contract, but a third first-round exit in four years has only heightened rival teams' belief that they might soon have a shot at hiring him
SALT LAKE CITY — Quin Snyder's eighth season as coach of the Utah Jazz came to another crushing conclusion Thursday night with a 98-96 loss to the Dallas Mavericks at a stunned Vivint Arena.
Snyder hadn’t lost a home game to Dallas for six years before these playoffs. The Jazz ended up losing two of their three home dates in this first-round matchup, barely won Game 4 by a single point and failed to advance past Round 1 for the third time in four seasons … even though Mavericks star Luka Dončić only played in half the series.
The rest of the NBA now awaits the fallout. Anticipation has been building around the league for weeks, beyond those teams rooting for Utah to break up co-stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, that Snyder might be nearing the end of his time with the Jazz.
As I tried to clarify during a recent Spotify Live session, that external interest from rival teams in poaching Snyder stems almost exclusively from the belief that he has interest in coaching elsewhere after a long and mostly successful run with the Jazz. Utah officials, to this point, have indicated a consistent desire for Snyder to stay.
Jazz general manager Justin Zanik couldn’t have said so in much stronger terms Friday. Utah fans surely preferred to hear from new CEO Danny Ainge on this matter and, frankly, several others, but Zanik — speaking publicly instead of Ainge — made it clear that the club wants Snyder to stay.
"Quin Snyder is one of the best coaches in the NBA," Zanik said. "There is no other partner I would rather have as a coach and as a leader of our players and as a partner in our front office than Quin Snyder."
Only three NBA teams currently have a coaching vacancy: Charlotte, Sacramento and the Los Angeles Lakers. Yet as we've been reporting here since March, San Antonio and the Lakers are believed to have interest in Snyder should he become available.
In the Lakers’ case, actually, it has zoomed …
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