Utah Jazz: Quin Snyder in Prime COY Position at the Quarter-Point

At the season’s quarter-point, the Utah Jazz are legit playoff contenders despite overwhelming injuries. Could Coach Quin Snyder receive some year-end hardware as a result?

It’s one of the typical sports cliches. Players or coaches say they don’t think about individual awards since winning takes care of that. While its true, that still doesn’t mean they shouldn’t shoot for individual goals.

Recently, The Ringer Podcast “The NBA Show” with Chris Vernon and Kevin O’Connor, (no, not the former Utah Jazz GM) discussed NBA awards over the first 20 some odd games. Kevin has been very bullish on the Jazz this year and he doubles down on Quin Snyder as his pick for coach of the year.

O’connor elaborated —

"“We mentioned earlier how the MVP usually goes to the best team and Coach of the Year tends to do that, but my pick for Coach of the Year is for the 13-9 Quin Snyder of the Utah Jazz. For me, I just think every quality that Snyder’s learned throughout his basketball life is observable with the Jazz.From his time as a player at Duke, to coaching the Spurs’ D-League team, to learning under [Ettore] Messina at CSKA Moscow, his year with the Hawks learning from Mike Budenholzer, Snyder has just a wealth of experience, making him a diversified, seasoned coach and we are seeing that within his roster because his roster kind of mirrors his unique skill set with a bunch of players who can play different rolls and situations and positions.Snyder, I think, with his experience, just maximizes the players on that roster and that comes despite injuries to Hayward, Hill, Favors, and so on. They have a Top 8 offense and a Top 5 defense despite so many injuries early in the season. I just think a lot of the credit should be given to Snyder. I just think he’s been outstanding. And by the end of the season I think we’ll be talking about the Jazz as a pseudo contender.Not quite a real contender but the next level down. I just love what he’s done and I love their roster and I think the best is yet to come for them.”"

The Jazz have done better than tread water while they have navigated the early season rash of injuries. As our own Ryan Aston recently wrote, the Jazz are locked in as a top 10 defense. He posed this enlightening chart from RealGM —

In fact, after the game last night Utah is Top 6 in both offensive and defensive ratings.

This is all in spite of some significant injuries.

The Jazz have been one of, if not the MOST, injured teams this year. Rudy Gobert is the lone starter to not miss a game due to injury. In fact the Jazz have played the second-most different five-man lineup combinations in the league and don’t have a single five-man lineup that has played more than 50 minutes together.

The total number of minutes our presumed starting five has played together? Still just 12.

More from The J-Notes

• With the FIBA World Cup over for Simone Fontecchio, it’s clear he deserves minutes for the Utah Jazz
• Best, Worst and Most likely scenarios for the Utah Jazz this season
• Hoops Hype downplays the significance of the Utah Jazz’s valuable assets
• 3 Utah Jazz players who have the most to gain or lose this season
• Former Utah Jazz forward Rudy Gay is a free agent still and it shouldn’t surprise anyone

The credit to succeeding with so much tribulation undoubtedly goes to Snyder. It also seems appropriate to applaud Dennis Lindsey and his group for bringing in such a wealth of talent to provide Snyder and his team enough ingredients to cook with.

The result is tantalizing. I agree with O’Connor, not only that Snyder is the Coach of the Year up to this point, but the best is yet to come.