The Atlanta Hawks formally introduced Quin Snyder as the franchise’s newest head coach on Monday afternoon. Snyder was unveiled to the assembled press, team partners and select season ticket holders as the final piece to a reshuffled basketball operations department that is spearheaded by General Manager Landry Fields, Assistant General Manager Kyle Korver and signed off by owner Tony Ressler.
Snyder will begin coaching the team at Tuesday night’s home game against the Washington Wizards at State Farm Arena.
Snyder was unveiled six days after the team fired former head coach Nate McMillan. Snyder says the right candidate is not just bright and creative and innovative, but understands the commitment it takes to build a program.
“So it’s, it’s not often where you find a level of idealism. It’s also met with kind of a practical reality and I think that’s a situation that I’ve been fortunate enough to come into,” Snyder said. “We had a chance to meet [the players] this morning. I’m really even more so after our meeting, it’s a group that I’m really excited to coach.”
Fields said what sold him on Snyder was his humility and selflessness as part of his core qualities. Additionally, he highlighted Snyder’s character that he wants in and around the basketball team as well as what his regime is attempting to build upon.
Snyder emphasized Ressler’s and Korver’s relationship on how the process would work with respect to when he’d begin coaching. He added he believes the opportunity to come in now, although challenging, is an opportunity to ‘hopefully go on a run’ while these things are not mutually exclusive.
“In the NBA you hear the term foxhole a lot and to get in the foxhole with these guys and I think those things have the opportunity to really accelerate the building of relationships,” Snyder said. “You’re faced with adversity. You go through it together collectively, and I didn’t want to wait until next year to do that. I felt like that was something that it just made sense to me to begin now.”
Snyder served as head coach of the Utah Jazz from the 2014-15 to 2021-22 seasons, accumulating a 372-264 record (.585) and leading the Jazz to the playoffs in six of his eight seasons.
Plus, Snyder also believes the Hawks, as currently constituted, can be greater than the sum of the parts. However, Atlanta has twenty-one games to climb out of the play-in spots and hopefully get into the top five of the NBA’s Eastern Conference. However, Snyder says his biggest hurdle starting out is building trust with the players.
“I think the relationships are what allows you to coach them effectively,” Snyder explained. “And so in those things, again, it’s part of the reason I wanted to start now. I think that our group needs to just decide to trust each other. And, it’s incumbent upon all of us myself, first and foremost, to not violate that trust.
And it’s surface level initially, just so you know, if it’s something that I say I’m going to do. You know people by their actions and if you’re transparent, those are the things in my mind and building those relationships is being real about what you believe and understanding that you can differ with people and to not be insecure and defensive.”