Stephen A. Smith was reacting to the news that Quin Snyder was stepping down as the Jazz's coach. It took 1:14 for it to happen.
The Utah Jazz are without a coach.
Utah was prepared to enter next season with Quin Snyder at the helm until the head coach stepped down. The two sides were talking about an extension for Snyder, who had two more years on his contract. They didn't reach an agreement before he left.
Danny Ainge said that he and Quin had been talking a lot over the last few weeks. We wanted him to stay. I walked away from being a general manager after 18 years in Boston and so I trust that Quin knows more about him and his family than we do.
His winning percentage of.585 ranked him 18th among NBA coaches who have worked for at least that long. He's the only one of the two to have a winning record with the Jazz. The regular season success did not translate to the playoffs. The Jazz didn't win a game in the playoffs under him.
He said it was time. It's time for the Jazz to move on. It's time for me to move on. It was the most logical thing to do to me.
As an NBA executive, Ainge will now look for a new coach.
He worked in the front office of the Celtics for 18 years. The Celtics won the NBA title in 2008 and then went on to win the NBA Championship in 2010. Stevens succeeded Ainge in the front office after leading the Celtics to three Eastern Conference finals.
Ainge is familiar with many of the names in the coaching world. This will be very different from the two previous ones.
Ryan Smith, the team's owner, said there is no timetable for making a hire and that the team is not under pressure to make a hire before the draft.
Smith said they would take their time. It's got to be right.
Utah has had four head coaches in 34 years. Since moving to Salt Lake City, the Jazz have had just six head coaches.
The ideal replacement for Smith will be a coach who can build on the foundation laid by the previous coach.
When it comes to this, there isn't a lot of a way to go about it. Quin has helped build up the organization that I work for. He was better off leaving this organization than he was finding it. He has built a foundation that we can use.
Though Ainge said he knows that Snyder is going to be coaching somewhere else in the near future, he wouldn't say when he would take the job.
"That's not something I'm thinking about at all," he said. I have been concentrating on this. I don't know what I'm going to do next year, as far as coaching or anything like that.
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