Quin Snyder has been working with Darvin Ham after every Lakers game as an unpaid coaching consultant

Nov 23, 2022 - 11:02 PM

When the Lakers were going through their coaching search, one name that kept coming up despite being employed at the time was Quin Snyder. The Jazz head coach never really indicated he wanted the job, but reports kept coming up linking him to it.

Obviously, the Lakers made the choice to hire Darvin Ham — and potentially the decision as well to not wait on Snyder’s future to play itself out at the same time — in a move that felt like the common sense one. Snyder would eventually part ways with Utah and never landed with another team.

That doesn’t mean, however, he’s entirely away from the NBA coaching world. In a recent piece for the OC Register, Kyle Goon spoke with Ham and revealed he’s in regular contact with Snyder.

“Opposites attract, man,” Ham said of him and Snyder. “That’s my dude. Obviously, his swag is way different from my type of swag. But we just find the humor in certain things, and we have this bond, this connection that keeps life in perspective.”

Ham has given Snyder credit as his pro bono consultant working “on a Utah check” after Snyder stepped away from the Jazz this summer. They talk at odd hours, recapping games and talking about best practices. Said Ham: “That dude (Snyder) sends me some long-ass text messages, too.”

But Snyder, 56, downplays his role: “I mostly ask questions, try to help him think about stuff. He knows his team, and he knows what he wants from them.”

Ham and Snyder have served on the same coaching staff together twice, one of those times being in Los Angeles for the 2011-12 season under Mike Brown. Snyder departed after that season to coach CSKA Moscow in Russia while Ham remained with the Lakers before both reunited for one more season in Atlanta under Mike Budenholzer.

Seeing Ham turn to Snyder for advice makes sense in a number of ways then, both because of their stints together and both having an understanding of coaching in Los Angeles. It’s also a sort of hedge on the report of Ham having head coaching expertise on his staff, something that did not come to fruition.

It would be interesting to see if this pro bono consultation develops into something more official down the road, but so long as Snyder is fine taking the Jazz’s money and helping the Lakers, that sounds like a mighty fine arrangement to me.

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