Almost 25 years ago, they converged upon a town in the middle of a state in the middle of America, three coaches from different parts of the world who had never worked together before.
Their task? To replace a legend.
There was Igor Kokoškov, who arrived from Serbia, happy to have a job. He was long on basketball genius and short on English.
Advertisement
There was John Hammond, a coaching veteran a decade older than the rest of the staff, who feared his own ambitions of rising through the ranks had stalled.
And then there was their boss: Quin Snyder, a former Duke point guard and a top assistant coach under Mike Krzyzewski who had too much energy and competitiveness to contain internally. In 1999, at just 32, he signed on to replace Norm Stewart, who had been the head coach at the University of Missouri for almost exactly as long as Snyder had been alive.
The union of Snyder, Kokoškov and Hammond only lasted one season. The three coaches never worked together again. But two decades later, the ripple effect of their lone season together at Missouri can still be felt. As a trio, they have formed one of the NBA’s more unusual brotherhoods.
“It’s one of those things, one of those relationships that just stands the test of time,” Snyder told The Athletic. “… If we were to run into each other at a given time, it would be like we were together a week ago.”
Since leaving Missouri in 2006, Snyder’s career has taken him from the D League to the NBA to Russia and back again. Today, Snyder ranks among the NBA’s top coaches. He transformed the Utah Jazz into playoff regulars over eight seasons as their head coach and is now trying to do the same with the Atlanta Hawks. Kokoškov is one of Jacque Vaughn’s top assistants in Brooklyn, helping the Nets move on from the failed Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving experiment.
Then there’s Hammond, whose journey moved him from the sidelines to the front office. He is now the general manager of the Orlando Magic and is leading a promising rebuild.
Decades of work brought each of these men to where he is today. But it’s worth asking where they would be without that single season together at Missouri — one year that set a course for their careers.
Like every assistant, Hammond wanted to become a head coach. But in 1999, he was in his mid-40s and working as an assistant for the Detroit Pistons, unsure if his head-coaching chance would come in the NBA. So when he heard Snyder was headed to Missouri, he was intrigued.
In the early ’90s, Hammond had befriended Snyder while they were on Larry Brown’s staff with the LA Clippers. They kept in touch even after Snyder left to go back to Duke, where he worked on his law degree while serving as an assistant to Krzyzewski. When Snyder got his break at Missouri, Hammond became interested in the Duke coaching fraternity and what Snyder could provide as an esteemed member. He was also piqued by the prospect of helping a young head coach in his first job.
Advertisement
“I had faith in him, and I just think he had the same in me,” Hammond said. “And I think that he trusted me, and … there’s no better way to kind of create a trust in someone than time. And we had that because of our relationship over the years.”
Hammond signed on to be Snyder’s “gray beard.” Snyder never expected Hammond to be his right-hand man for long. He figured the NBA would come calling for him back soon enough. Snyder refers to Hammond’s time in Missouri as his “sabbatical year.” Hammond wasn’t the only familiar face Snyder brought with him to Columbia, Mo. But instead of hiring another coach with extensive college experience, Snyder went across the pond to bring in somebody with none.
Kokoškov had been a pro prospect in Serbia before a car accident ended his playing career. He decided to become a coach. In 1997, he visited Duke as part of a foreign exchange program for coaches. The Blue Devils treated him as if he were another member of the coaching staff. He hit it off with Snyder, who invited him to stay at his apartment. They spent many late nights in Durham trading ideas about player development concepts and drills. When Kokoškov went back to Serbia to coach his own team, the two regularly corresponded over email. So when Snyder got the Missouri job, he placed an overseas call to Kokoškov with an offer to be one of his assistants.
“Everybody in the country knew that (Snyder)’s going to be the next one to get a big program,” Kokoškov told The Athletic. “Quin is a guy who is teaching out of the box, always thinking about the future in many different ways, so Quin was putting a staff together and the call came out of nowhere. … To coach with Quin, he’s very precise and he offered me the job and I said yes.”
Kokoškov had never coached before in the United States, let alone in college. He became the first European to hold a full-time coaching position at the NCAA Division I level. He faced a massive learning curve. He recalled the local media speculating that he’d recruit a pipeline of international players, though he quickly learned recruiting was not his preference. He still remembers the disappointment when fans realized that no great pipeline was coming.
Advertisement
“That was the only thing I didn’t do,” he said. “So, people were like, “What are you doing here?”
They would soon find out.
Snyder’s players quickly realized their new coach was nothing like their old coach. Stewart was old-school, perhaps too much so, and set in his ways. Snyder, who was just four months old when Stewart took the Missouri job, was young enough to still play with the team and teach by example. His jet black, curly hair made him look like a younger Pat Riley.
Johnnie Parker, a sophomore in Snyder’s first season, said players never really trained with Stewart, who was 64 when he retired. Snyder and his staff immediately shook that up, and Kokoškov’s footwork drills were unlike anything the players had ever seen.
“He may not have been able to see the value that he was able to add from his vantage point,” Snyder said of Kokoškov. “But it was clear to me.”
Kokoškov spent hours with players working on dribbling, footwork and the rest of the game’s basics. Kokoškov said his international background made the fundamentals crucial in his eyes, because at the time, Europe had fewer top-tier players. With players lacking the athleticism that is common in the States, mastering the basics was a must.
“You have to dance basketball,” Kokoškov said. “It’s about choreography, it’s about a move, balance control, footwork. That’s something that coming from the small basketball or basketball schools (overseas), we didn’t have the players like you have here in (the) United States. So … if someone shows any potential or talent, as a coach you have to really focus and try to develop that player. Sometimes … American coaches are very spoiled, especially if they have a dominant or successful program, because that can always recruit better players. So that wasn’t my case.”
Teaching the Euro step was one of Kokoškov’s first lessons. This was years before it made its way to the NBA. But his tactics weren’t always an easy sell. When he first taught players the move, many countered that officials would call them for traveling.
Advertisement
“No, it’s not,” he’d say. “It’s not a travel. Trust me! Trust me!”
Kokoškov spoke limited English, but he spoke basketball. “Like this!” was his trademark phrase, and in games, players said they’d notice him getting frustrated when he couldn’t articulate what he wanted to say and wasn’t able to demonstrate. Those habits have stuck with Kokoškov all the way to Brooklyn, where he still uses the ball as a universal language.
“My English is still limited,” he said. “So it’s just a desire to share knowledge and experience with the players. That basically breaks all barriers.”
In Columbia, Hammond took an immediate liking to the 28-year-old coach. Kokoškov often visited Hammond’s office to discuss X’s and O’s. “Let me show you one thing,” he’d tell Hammond. An hour later, all of Hammond’s whiteboards would be covered with plays and concepts.
To help Kokoškov improve his English, Hammond took an unconventional approach: He used the KFC drive-thru menu. Kokoškov would sit in the car and Hammond would ask him for his order. It didn’t always work.
“I’ll take a No. 3 with a Coke,” Hammond told the window.
“Coach Ham, just order me a number,” Kokoškov said before Hammond could quiz him.
Like any coach, Snyder picked up ideas from watching other teams play. Brian Grawer, a junior guard in 1999-2000, estimated Snyder’s playbook was three inches thick, and the coach often came into practice and shared what he’d learned from watching a game the previous evening. He’d try to implement it with the Tigers, but his players weren’t ready. They couldn’t keep pace with Snyder’s mind.
“He could see a game, come to practice and be like, ‘All right guys, I was watching the Bulls and Lakers last night,’” Grawer said. “‘We were defending this pick-and-roll this way. I watched them do this; we’re switching what we’re doing, and we’re going to do it this way from now on.’
Advertisement
“That’s tough when you got guys that are just like, ‘Wait a minute; I just learned how to do it the other way.’”
Snyder’s player development tactics were also ahead of the times. Decades before mental health became a major conversation in sports, he hired a sports psychologist for the team. Players meditated.
”There’s a lot of things that are going on, and basketball shouldn’t be the only thing that defines you,” Snyder said of his reasoning. “It’s what you do, it’s not who you are.”
When Snyder realized Kareem Rush, his talented freshman who would go on to play eight years in the NBA, was shy with the media, he showed him video interviews of Duke’s Shane Battier, a seasoned quote, to help him improve.
On the court, Snyder focused on Keyon Dooling’s 3-point shooting. In his freshman year, Dooling shot just 19 percent from deep. To fix his shot, Snyder showed Dooling clips of Scottie Pippen shooting a set 3 to show him better mechanics. In his sophomore year, Dooling’s 3-point percentage doubled to 38 percent.
Snyder also introduced unique drills, named after talented players with trademark moves — all while dribbling an imaginary ball. He was big on the art of visualization. There was a drill named for Grant Hill, which called for a front step and a twist-back slide before the player lowered his shoulder, all in service of getting a different angle from the defender. Two drills were named after former Michigan State star Steve Smith, others were for moves by Allen Iverson, Chris Herren, Dražen Petrović and Steve Francis.
“For a young player, identifying that piece of footwork or move or pass or shot whatever it may be with someone that’s successful on such a high level, there’s a credibility that comes with that,” Snyder said. “And I think it grabs guys’ attention because they understand how valuable or relevant it could be.
Advertisement
“I truly believe to this day: If you can name it, you can teach it.”
While ahead of their time, Kokoškov said the game has changed so much in the past two decades to where he and Snyder “would probably laugh,” about some of their old tactics. But Hammond remains impressed.
“If I was able to think one step ahead about coaching,” Hammond said, “Quin was thinking 10 steps ahead.”
Kenge Stevenson, a sophomore in Snyder’s first season, remembers onlookers watching practice and wondering what on earth the team was doing. Snyder didn’t budge.
“Don’t worry about dribbling,” Stevenson recalls the coach telling his team. “Make sure you get the footwork down, make sure your feet know what to do.’”
Snyder dunked before the team’s NCAA Tournament game against North Carolina, his alma mater’s archrival, to pump the team up. His passion led him to throw and break Rolex watches out of frustration. Perhaps the most famous casualty came during a charge drill at practice. The Tigers were not succumbing to gravity at Snyder’s standard.
“Let me show you how to take a charge,” he said, instructing Jason Sutherland, his graduate assistant and a former all-conference player for Missouri, to come at him. “C’mon,” Snyder told him.“Drill me.”
At full speed, players recall, Sutherland put his knee in Snyder’s chest.
“That’s how you take a charge!” Snyder roared. “That’s how you f—— take a charge!”
Snyder instructed players to bulldoze him just like Sutherland had. Everyone knew Snyder had a bad back, and players were afraid of what would happen if they injured their coach.
“Am I going to get in trouble for doing this?” Grawer recalled thinking. “Is he going to put me on the line after practice?”
The demonstration worked. The players said the whole team proceeded to take charges as hard as their coach the rest of practice and into the remainder of the season. But the lesson followed Snyder home. Clarence Gilbert, a sophomore on the team, recalled Snyder being “pretty banged up” and needing treatment after the demonstration.
“I bruised my tailbone pretty good, but I wasn’t going to show it,” Snyder said. “I got two fake hips now, so it took a toll long term.”
While Kokoškov developed players and Snyder got run over, Hammond had his own distinct, dad-like role on the staff. In fact, many players’ memories of Hammond have nothing to do with basketball. Hambone, as he was nicknamed, had pristine suits and a smile fit for a Crest commercial. Jeff Hafer, an undersized 6-foot-5 senior center that year, remembers Hammond’s distaste for his hair; Hafer grew it long, but cut it after Christmas. When Grawer grew out a beard, Hammond, who was always clean-cut and freshly shaven, stepped in.
Advertisement
“Oh my gosh, Grawer,” Hammond told him. “My wife tells me every day to tell you you got to shave that off. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but try to get rid of that thing.”
Hammond said he assumed the parental role partially because Snyder, Kokoškov and the rest of the staff were too young for players to look at them that way.
“(Snyder) can’t call Coach K all the time and ask for advice over at Duke,” Mark Wampler, a senior forward that year said. “But John Hammond was like Coach Snyder’s father figure.”
Hammond had coached Hill, Danny Manning and other notable players in the NBA and told his current squad what to expect at the next level. He was great at explaining roles and what the staff needed from each guy on the roster. When Dooling declared for the draft after the season, Hammond worked him out daily in preparation for what he’d expect from teams’ pre-draft workouts. Multiple players recalled Hammond’s ability to think in both the macro and micro sense and said they’re not surprised he’s now an executive; leading a front office calls for that kind of mindset.
Hammond drew upon a variety of experience as he tried to show Snyder the CEO-like approach many coaches have adopted. He mentored his boss on balancing all the tasks that came with the job.
“Not only was he experienced, but he was wise,” Snyder said of Hammond. “I think he knew how much he was helping, too, and that’s always gratifying. When he was gone I probably kept walking down to his office trying to see if he was there to come sit down on his couch and talk to him.”
And thanks to that balance of experience and genius, the trio of Hammond, Kokoškov and Snyder got along harmoniously.
“I never thought about how they’d never worked together,” Wampler said. “But the way they interacted was like they had been boys for a long time. Always on the same page. They supported each other, and they all had a mission.”
Throughout the 1999-2000 season, Snyder and Hammond invited friends from across the hoops world to Columbia to spend time around their program. Their combined Rolodex made for some big-name visitors. Doug Collins, who was working as a broadcaster after stints coaching the Bulls and Pistons, came to town. So did Alvin Gentry, then the Pistons head coach, and Joe Dumars, who’d just retired after a Hall of Fame playing career in Detroit.
Advertisement
On the court, Missouri went 18-14, good enough to sneak into the NCAA Tournament as a No. 9 seed. Dooling emerged as an NBA lottery pick, partially thanks to Snyder’s player development tactics, and Rush and Gilbert were major contributors too.
But perhaps the most consequential scouting done in Columbia that winter had more to do with coaches than players. Gentry, a longtime friend of Hammond’s, was fired in Detroit in March 2000 and took the Clippers job five months later. When he did, he asked Hammond to join him.
Hammond said telling Snyder he was leaving remains one of the toughest conversations of his career. He didn’t forget about the players either, using his connections with the Pistons to get Wampler an internship at their arena, the Palace at Auburn Hills, upon graduating.
Hammond also pitched another job to his new boss; he wanted the Clippers to bring Kokoškov aboard in a player development role. Hammond didn’t expect the suggestion to go far, but Gentry remembered Kokoškov from his trip to Missouri and passed the name up to Elgin Baylor, the Hall of Fame forward who was then the Clippers’ general manager. As the interview rounds progressed, Kokoškov stayed in the race.
“Igor, hang in there,” Hammond recalls telling his friend. “Chances are slim to none, but you never know.”
Kokoškov got the job. He became the first full-time, non-American assistant coach in NBA history. This season, the NBA has 23 international assistant coaches on the bench. Kokoškov hasn’t left the professional ranks since and credits Hammond for changing his life.
“If someone told me many years ago I would be a coach for an NBA team,” Kokoškov said, “I’d probably drop dead.
“I always say, I’m not the best foreign coach. I was just the luckiest.”
Over the years, the two have thought back to the days they spent waiting as Kokoškov interviewed and share a phrase: slim to none — a reminder…
“That became our mantra through our time together in the NBA from that point on,” Hammond said. “This opportunity could present itself, and he’d say, ‘Hey, Coach. Slim to none, slim to none.’”
Advertisement
After a year on the Clippers bench, Hammond transitioned to the front office and became the assistant general manager of the Pistons in 2002. In 2003, Kokoškov joined Hammond in Detroit as an assistant coach, and the following year, the Pistons won an NBA title. Both men were still in Detroit when Missouri fired Snyder in 2006, and they watched as he caught on in the D League and then as an NBA assistant.
“The two of them began a lifelong relationship that started in Columbia, Missouri,” Snyder said of Kokoškov and Hammond. “I don’t think any of us have been back there since. No one has invited us back, but maybe we’ll just take a trip back there and we all go back to our old stomping ground. It would be fun.”
In 2013, as the Milwaukee Bucks’ GM, Hammond made a career-defining decision when he drafted a relatively unknown player from Greece named Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Two years later, the coaches reunited in Utah, where Kokoškov became Snyder’s assistant for his second season as the Jazz’s head coach. It had been 16 years since Kokoškov moved to the United States to work with an energetic young coach, and the Jazz marked his fifth NBA stop since leaving Missouri. That season, he, Snyder and Hammond were captured in a photo before a game against the Bucks. The photo, which Hammond has saved on his phone, shows Hammond and Snyder, both smirking at Kokoškov.
“They’re making fun of me,” Kokoškov said. “You can tell. Probably about my English.”
Kokoškov’s historic track continued in 2018 when he was named Phoenix Suns head coach, which he held for a year, making him the first NBA head coach born and raised outside the U.S. In the summer of 2021, Hammond introduced Snyder at the coaches clinic at NBA Summer League, and got emotional. “Not only is Quin a dear friend of mine,” he said in his speech, “but he’s recognized as one of the best coaches in the NBA.”
“John is always keeping tabs on me and seeing how I’m doing,” Snyder said. “He’s the same guy that he was for me in Columbia, Missouri that he is now. He’s just always thinking about me and looking after me and making sure I’m doing OK.”
Advertisement
In the past 20 years, all three men have changed the game, be it through player development, in the draft or by shaping the perception of international coaches. They’ve brought their unique experiences to every job they’ve taken — and perhaps no experience looms larger than those handful of months they spent together in the middle of Missouri.
“That’s where basketball is a gift,” Snyder said. “It does give you those moments to be together even if it’s only a year. A year and we joke around like dog years. One year is a lifetime. Every season is a lifetime. And that was a lifetime for the three of us.”
When the three coaches were together at Missouri, they often frequented Booches, a famous local burger joint known for being cash-only and closed on Sundays. During one trip, they posed for a photograph that was turned into a postcard used for recruiting. Snyder kept a few for himself.
One has stayed on his desk ever since.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: John Raoux / Associated Press, Alex Slitz, Rocky Widner / Getty Images)