Atlanta • Back in the days of Frank Layden and Jerry Sloan, the Jazz used to put in an annual request to the league to spend the games in the lead-up to Christmas out on the road, with the coaches believing that such a schedule was paramount to eliminating peripheral distractions.
With stops in Atlanta, Charlotte and Miami this weekend, this season marks the first time since Dec. 2015 that the franchise went on the road immediately preceding Christmas, and even that was just a one-off, in Oakland against the Warriors. The organization’s last real pre-Christmas trip came the season before, when the Jazz spent six games spanning Dec. 14-22, 2014, away from Vivint Smart Home Arena.
Coach Quin Snyder noted Thursday night before the Hawks game that the makeup of the schedule is out of his hands, though he admitted he could appreciate what his predecessors were trying to do.
“If I could choose our schedule, I would tailor a lot of things to fit holidays,” he said with a grin.
Veteran big man Ed Davis, now in his 10th year in the league, said he’s at the point in his career where everyone around him knows that his routine is unassailable barring emergency, but conceded that he sees the logic of such a set-up.
“I can see how it can be a distraction, for sure. You got a lot of family members coming into town, things like that can get you off your everyday routine,” Davis said. “For me, personally, it don’t matter — I got a schedule, I stick to it no matter what’s going on.”
The flip side, meanwhile, and another possible motivation for Layden and Sloan, is that being on a road trip around the holidays can’t help but bond a team together.
In the absence of players being around their actual family, the team becomes a surrogate one.
“Particularly around the holidays, you’re reminded more and more that — especially our travel party — there is a familial aspect to it, whether it’s Thanksgiving in Memphis or flying back to Salt Lake for Christmas,” Snyder said. “Everything that you’re doing, you’re doing together.”
Davis confirmed as much, pointing out that flying out the day before a game becomes an opportunity to spend time with teammates.
“Just last night, me, Rudy, and [Tony Bradley] went to dinner together. That’s how you bond,” he said. “… But the locker room talk, dinners, things like that — that’s where you really develop that chemistry and that friendship and those bonds that last a lifetime.”
That said, with 2 1/2-year-old twins waiting for him back at home, he’s glad the Jazz are returning to Salt Lake City on Christmas Eve.
“This is gonna be my first Christmas with my kids understanding what’s going on, waking up and unwrapping gifts,” Davis said. “So being able to experience that with them and for them is going to be good. So I’m definitely looking forward to that.”
