It was strange Tuesday night seeing Quin Snyder striding the floor in the Atlanta Hawks game against the Washington Wizards. The sight, a midseason addition to a troubled team he parachuted into seemingly out of the blue, had those around the NBA chattering about why exactly he and Atlanta had been in such a rush.
“The money,” one thought. “Why not,” another offered. Another possible bite at the playoff apple. The — eye roll here — “love of the game.” An itch the coach had to scratch after so much time away after parting ways with Utah last summer. And so on.
Still, a new head coach dropping into the middle of a .500 team with three-quarters of the season in the books isn’t exactly the NBA norm.
And with that in mind, the most interesting theory also seemed among the most plausible: That the emerging power dynamics in Atlanta, and the big decisions that will follow surrounding Trae Young and his teammates, meant Snyder was best served getting into that job as soon as possible.
Time, and cut-throat NBA politics, wait for no man.
By that reasoning, the Hawks’ 119-116 loss Tuesday night was somewhat irrelevant. Snyder was there, rapidly transitioning from vacationing as an unemployed basketball coach to the leader of an NBA team he’d had nothing to do just with a few days earlier, because the most important realities right now with the Atlanta Hawks are happening off the court.
That fact can be broken into two parts — one playing out in a divided locker room, the other in a Game-of-Thrones-like front office.
Or so the thinking goes.
Starting with the locker room, it’s no secret there’s a serious disconnect between Young, the team’s star player, and many — though some say nearly all — of his teammates. He is not beloved, sources say, and there’s a strong view that Young fails to lead, to understand or care to understand what is required of him, and that as a result the team will never achieve what it should until that reality is fixed.
One way, or another.
Not that trading him would be easy: “They’d want a ton for him,”…
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