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Story touching on Quin's time at MU
Posted on: April 19, 2018 at 08:44:47 CT
FIJItiger MU
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/basketball/ct-spt-quin-snyder-utah-jazz-coach-playoffs-20180416-story.html
"A chemistry builder" is how Kenton Paulino, a former University of Texas player who played for Snyder's Toros, described his old coach.
Snyder's reputation was more bruised than that, but he largely kept the details to himself. Something had happened at the University of Missouri, that much players knew, and many of them were curious but avoided the subject.
"We never got into that," said DerMarr Johnson, the No. 6 overall draft pick in 2000. "I was the vet on that team, and . . . Quin came to me a lot with stuff. I heard of stuff [regarding Snyder's past], but it never even came up."
Paulino never outright asked him about Missouri, but Snyder knew Paulino dreamed of being a college coach and there were realities he needed to understand.
"It wore him down. It absolutely wore him down," Paulino said. "He wanted to make sure I was completely, 100 percent ready for: 'If you want to do this, you've got to know exactly what you're getting into.' "
Eventually, Paulino — who played against the Missouri Tigers when Snyder coached them — went looking for answers. Indeed, Snyder had been a coaching wunderkind whose career rose fast and crashed hard. A former point guard with a Duke pedigree, three Final Four appearances and a pair of graduate degrees, Snyder was a head coach at 32 and the architect of an Elite Eight team by 35.
Then he recruited a troubled player named Ricky Clemons, whom Snyder kept believing in even after Clemons choked his girlfriend and kept on scholarship after he was charged with domestic assault. Clemons later crashed an all-terrain vehicle at the home of the university president, went to jail for violating his probation and was the subject of an NCAA investigation that unspooled Snyder's program and, following jailhouse interviews with the FBI and accusations that Clemons received improper benefits, led to the coach's resignation.
Snyder, who through a Jazz spokesman declined an interview request for this story, learned to perfect the art of conversational evasion. Paulino said Snyder never shared the specifics with him, but by the time their paths crossed in Austin, one thing seemed clear.
"He was almost grateful for the experience," said Paulino, who indeed is now an assistant coach at Tulsa.
That day he listened to each player's answer — "What is your definition of making it?" — and then it was Snyder's turn. After Missouri, he told the men surrounding him, he disappeared to North Carolina and planned to quit coaching. His marriage fell apart, his son was back in North Carolina, and his life was mostly in shambles.
One day he climbed into a van and started driving, and the way he told the story, he wasn't sure where he was headed. But on the way he realized he missed the game, and eventually he found himself in Austin, where there was an opening to coach the Toros — basketball instruction and, for better or worse, nothing more.
Now here he was, and when it came to answering his own question, Snyder told them he wasn't sure anymore what his own definition was, but if this was it and coaching the game for a living was as good as it ever got for him, at least in that moment, that seemed okay by him.
"A chemistry builder" is how Kenton Paulino, a former University of Texas player who played for Snyder's Toros, described his old coach.
Snyder's reputation was more bruised than that, but he largely kept the details to himself. Something had happened at the University of Missouri, that much players knew, and many of them were curious but avoided the subject.
"We never got into that," said DerMarr Johnson, the No. 6 overall draft pick in 2000. "I was the vet on that team, and . . . Quin came to me a lot with stuff. I heard of stuff [regarding Snyder's past], but it never even came up."
Paulino never outright asked him about Missouri, but Snyder knew Paulino dreamed of being a college coach and there were realities he needed to understand.
"It wore him down. It absolutely wore him down," Paulino said. "He wanted to make sure I was completely, 100 percent ready for: 'If you want to do this, you've got to know exactly what you're getting into.' "
Eventually, Paulino — who played against the Missouri Tigers when Snyder coached them — went looking for answers. Indeed, Snyder had been a coaching wunderkind whose career rose fast and crashed hard. A former point guard with a Duke pedigree, three Final Four appearances and a pair of graduate degrees, Snyder was a head coach at 32 and the architect of an Elite Eight team by 35.
Then he recruited a troubled player named Ricky Clemons, whom Snyder kept believing in even after Clemons choked his girlfriend and kept on scholarship after he was charged with domestic assault. Clemons later crashed an all-terrain vehicle at the home of the university president, went to jail for violating his probation and was the subject of an NCAA investigation that unspooled Snyder's program and, following jailhouse interviews with the FBI and accusations that Clemons received improper benefits, led to the coach's resignation.
Snyder, who through a Jazz spokesman declined an interview request for this story, learned to perfect the art of conversational evasion. Paulino said Snyder never shared the specifics with him, but by the time their paths crossed in Austin, one thing seemed clear.
"He was almost grateful for the experience," said Paulino, who indeed is now an assistant coach at Tulsa.
That day he listened to each player's answer — "What is your definition of making it?" — and then it was Snyder's turn. After Missouri, he told the men surrounding him, he disappeared to North Carolina and planned to quit coaching. His marriage fell apart, his son was back in North Carolina, and his life was mostly in shambles.
One day he climbed into a van and started driving, and the way he told the story, he wasn't sure where he was headed. But on the way he realized he missed the game, and eventually he found himself in Austin, where there was an opening to coach the Toros — basketball instruction and, for better or worse, nothing more.
Now here he was, and when it came to answering his own question, Snyder told them he wasn't sure anymore what his own definition was, but if this was it and coaching the game for a living was as good as it ever got for him, at least in that moment, that seemed okay by him.
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Story touching on Quin's time at MU - FIJItiger MU - 4/19 08:44:47