Las Vegas • If the Utah Jazz practicing on a pair of temporarily installed courts within an opulent hotel ballroom evokes memories of the Orlando bubble situation during the NBA restart in the summer of 2020, well … that’s exactly the point.
The reason the Jazz are holding their annual three-day training camp at the Wynn hotel in Sin City this year is precisely because the team is looking to replicate the bonding experience that took place in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic-caused shutdown that occurred.
“It reminds me of the bubble,” All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell said Tuesday afternoon in an impromptu interview room set up in the Wynn, where the team is staying. “They did an amazing job of setting it up.”
Getting away from both the Zions Bank Basketball Campus practice facility and from Vivint Arena appears to have been coach Quin Snyder’s brainchild.
With the Jazz coming off a frustrating second-round loss to the Clippers in the 2021 NBA playoffs, then making a few substantial changes around the margins to try and elevate the team’s performance in the postseason, the coach was looking for a way to set the tone early on.
And he felt like replicating some of the conditions of that restart would do the trick.
“When we were in the bubble, there was part of that process that I thought really helped our team,” Snyder said during Monday’s media day. “And it was a lot of things — it was eating together, it was the pingpong table, it was something as simple as coming down the elevator and walking through the hallway and you’re at the gym. Like, literally not getting on a bus.”
So Snyder reached out to Albert Hall, who runs the marketing agency/event management company HallPass Media, and who is one of the co-founders of the Las Vegas Summer League, to see what might be arranged.
“What we got back, it exceeded expectations,” Snyder said.
He acknowledged that moving training camp out of the home market would involve some level of sacrifice for some of the team, forcing players, coaches, trainers, et cetera to spend a few days away from their families.
But even those members of the team see what he’s trying to accomplish.
“I tried to get out of it,” Joe Ingles joked on Tuesday following the team’s first practice. “… No, I’m not gonna not come to training camp. Ideally, I’d like to stay with my family every day, if I could, but that’s not the reality of the job that I have.
“It is nice to be with the guys for a few days, see some new faces. That part of it is nice,” he added. “Vegas — no one’s going to say there’s ‘no distractions,’ because obviously we’re in Vegas, and a good part of it is a distraction. But just to be with the guys, it almost forces you to hang out and spend time together, a lot like the bubble. I would say that’s a very similar feeling to this.”
Veteran guard Mike Conley noted that, as a member of the Memphis Grizzlies, he attended several “destination training camps.” He noted that the ensuing “change of scenery” always seems to have a tangible effect.
“Players get to just focus on basketball and focus on each other, frankly, just being around each other. More so than you would be if you were at home. We’d all go home to our families and lives, and then come back to work,” Conley said. “And now, we’re stuck in the same hotel, we’re eating the same food, we’re having dinner with each other. So I think it’s good for us to just bond for a few days.”
Snyder, meanwhile, said last season’s playoff elimination was very much on his mind as he set up the trip.
When the team members went their separate ways in the aftermath of their defeat at the hands of the Clippers, they did so with a sour taste in the mouths. Their coach wanted them to collectively revisit that together now.
This trip to Vegas provides the opportunity “for us to process last year. … I think the time for us to be together and have real dialogue about what it is that we need to do to be better and set the table that way is as important as anything,” he said. “And Las Vegas gives us a chance to do that. I don’t know if that includes the craps table or not.”
Depends on the player, apparently.
As Mitchell strolled up to the dais on Tuesday, he asked the assembled media how they were doing, gambling-wise, while sheepishly noting he was down a bit.
Jordan Clarkson, however, vowed on media day to keep his distance.
“I’m not a super-big fan of going to Vegas,” he admitted. “… I’ve lost way too much money there!”
