What The Los Angeles Lakers Can Learn From The Utah Jazz
By Scott Asai
The Los Angeles Lakers face the red-hot Utah Jazz on Thursday, winners of 10 of their last 12 games giving them the best record since the All-Star Break. Both the Lakers and Jazz are rebuilding, but the way the two teams are going about it is much different.
Byron Scott has been shuffling lineups all season, mostly because of injuries, giving different players a chance to shine. Quin Snyder, first year head coach of the Jazz, has pretty much stuck with his younger guys in hopes of developing them for the future. Neither team will make the playoffs, but the groundwork Snyder is doing this season will set the Jazz up for success in the future.
Point Guard Trey Burke is the better player, but rookie Dante Exum was inserted into the starting lineup early on in the season. Reminiscent of Phil Jackson‘s demotion of Lamar Odom as the 6th man during the Lakers championship years of 2009 and 2010, Snyder communicated his intentions to Burke. Utah also traded disgruntled center Enes Kanter to the Oklahoma City Thunder so Rudy Gobert could be the focus in the paint and it’s garnered the big man Defensive Player of the Year mentions.
At the heart of this rebuilding project is Snyder’s vision for player development that he honed under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. His philosophy is:
"“Hopefully you make the whole greater than the sum of its parts,” Snyder said of coaching. “At the same time, if your parts are improving, that’s another way to get better.”"
Simple, yet effective. Snyder spends time with individual players working on fundamentals and details of their games. It’s something he’s done as an assistant coach at Duke and now as the head coach of the Jazz. His style is more hands-on than a typical head coach, but it seems to be working for the Jazz who are climbing the standings in the Western Conference.
Scott shouldn’t try to be more like Snyder because that’s not his style, but it’s vital the Lakers assistant coaches focus on it. The Lakers do have young talent in Jordan Clarkson, Ed Davis and Tarik Black, but outside of Clarkson, others haven’t gotten the consistent minutes to develop during the actual games.
Coaching is easy to critique from the sidelines especially on a rebuilding team, but since the Lakers don’t have anything else to play for besides a top draft pick, the younger players on the team should play more minutes than the veterans. There’s no substitute for experience and that’s exactly what the young players on the Lakers need.