Snyder, who in Austin began to collect the ashes of his own broken career and systematically rebuild it over most of a decade, is now the coach of the NBA's Utah Jazz, a team that opened a playoff series Sunday against the Oklahoma City Thunder. And more impressive than pushing the team into the playoffs was the way Snyder took a group that lost star forward Gordon Hayward to free agency and started this season 17-26 and turned it into a team that went 31-8 over the past three months.