Utah Jazz excited about young core

The Utah Jazz entered the 2014 offseason with three big questions – who would be their next head coach, who would they take in the draft and what would they do with restricted free agent forward Gordon Hayward?

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The Jazz hired Atlanta Hawks’ assistant Quin Snyder as their head coach. They used the fifth-overall pick on Australian point guard Dante Exum and the 23rd-overall selection on former Duke Blue Devils’ forward Rodney Hood. Then, they let Hayward sign a four-year, $63 million offer sheet with the Charlotte Hornets and then matched that offer to ring him back.

They join a young core that includes big man Derrick Favors, last year’s lottery pick, point guard Trey Burke, center Enes Kanter, guard Alec Burks and big man Rudy Gobert. Snyder is excited about the future.

“It’s been great,” Snyder said via Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders. “I mean, the biggest thing is I’m part of a great organization and that in and of itself makes the opportunity a good one. Having the opportunity to be a head coach in the NBA is something that everybody in my profession aspires to, so having that opportunity, I feel very grateful.

“It’s a little early, we haven’t even had our full team together, but I think our goal generally would be to keep getting better. I mean, we want to [improve] every day, every practice. It sounds like a cliché, but particularly with a group as young as we are, that’s something we can aspire to. … We’ve approached it that way where we wanted these two, three weeks [of summer league] to be about growth and our staff has done a great job kind of pulling that out of them while here in Vegas.”

It will likely take some time, but this is a Jazz team that has assembled a lot of talent and should eventually be back in the playoffs.

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