Under Sloan, Jazz singing sweet tune

[RonnieBrewer (Ronnie Brewer)]

Under Sloan, Jazz singing sweet tune
Underappreciated coach might finally win coach of year with this crew
By Sam Smith
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 12:10 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2006

Making predictions is a tough business. People always think we're supposed to
know what's going to happen because we are around the sport and the players.
And I always say if I knew, I'd live in Las Vegas and not have to work.
So, now more than 30 years later and still writing, it’s clear what I know.

But I think I'm finally going to get one right this season, that Jerry Sloan
of the Utah Jazz will be the NBA coach of the year.

I've got a good shot not only because the Jazz has to be the surprise story of
the season, but because I pick Sloan for coach of the year just about every
season. Oh, sometimes I'll go for Phil Jackson or Pat Riley or Gregg Popovich.
I thought Mike D'Antoni and Larry Brown deserved it in recent seasons and went
for them. But here is Sloan working on his 22nd NBA season as a head coach,
the longest tenured coach in American professional sports, just having won
his 1,000th NBA game, and Sloan has yet to be named coach of the year.

Not that this matters to Sloan. I remember talking to Sloan a few years ago,
less than a year after his wife, Bobbye, had died of cancer, and he'd stayed
with coaching when many wondered if with his wife gone, with Malone and
Stockton gone, perhaps Jerry would retire back to that farm in McLeansboro,
Ill., work on his antique tractor collection, maybe sort all that junk he'd
collected over the years working his way through flea markets and antique
shops on the road, wear his John Deere baseball caps with the NBA starting to
banish them in the interest of a more corporate appearance.

But Sloan is a coach, a teacher, a competitor. He couldn't leave the game
even as he was going through his first losing since season being fired by
his beloved Bulls in 1982.

"At least I won't have to answer all those questions about coach of the
year anymore," Sloan laughed.

He wasn't kidding.

Sloan hates when we bring that up. He was the player's player, and now he's
a player's coach. It's a player's game, and that's where the attention should
go. Assuming they deserve it, which most Sloan players do, because he makes
sure of that.

This is not your typical Jerry Sloan Utah Jazz team, though not necessarily
because it is among the league leaders in scoring and toward the bottom in
points allowed. It just shows that Sloan is a coach, not a cookie cutter.
He's adjusted to the talent, a seven-footer in Mehmet Okur who prefers to
shoot three pointers, a brilliant all-around defender in Andrei Kirilenko who
wants to be a scorer. Sloan has taken the reigns off second-year guard Deron
Williams, who's attacked the basket more than the pick and roll, like John
Stockton did.

He's got what we know as the Sloan-type player, Matt Harpring, too. As Sloan
used to say when he played for the Chicago Bulls in the late 1960's and early
1970's, "I don't have the ability of the men I guard, so I have to work twice
as hard to stay on the same floor with them." Harpring has to do that.
All Sloan players are instructed to.

And there's been the return from two seasons of relative inactivity with
injuries, or ennui, depending upon whom you talked to, of Carlos Boozer. The
Jazz never gave up on him, though you probably could have had him for cheap
last summer. Too late now. He's become a double-double horse for the Jazz.
Not quite Karl Malone, but a guy like that, like Sloan, whose sum seems more
than the parts he brings to the game.

And it doesn't appear as if they are going away. They bring in a second-round
pick, Paul Millsap, a Sloan kind of guy who everyone passed up even though he
led the nation in rebounding in college. Too small. Just gets the ball.
Derek Fisher brings the toughness and guile Sloan adores.

It's not the relentless pick and roll anymore, Malone to Stockton, Stockton
to Malone, again and again, again and again, until it worked or the opponent
wore out. Teams hated playing the Jazz, running through all those screens and
ducking all those elbows and knees. They said Stockton, all 175 pounds of him,
was dirty. Malone, you could guess that with arms as big as most guys' thighs,
might be.

But Stockton went after the big guys, and they didn't like that. He had to
be dirty. Like they said about Sloan. The big guys and big names didn't like
a defender in their grill all game.

Walt Frazier, the dapper New York guard, would lose his cool against Sloan,
and it didn't befit his fur coat-wearing days. Billy Cunningham used to
scream to anyone who'd listen about Sloan. Rick Barry threw a punch at him,
once explaining, "He grabbed me like he always does." JoJo White added to
the chorus. Sloan's coach, Dick Motta, used to counter that if Sloan played
in New York, he'd be hailed as a defensive genius.

Yes, they complained as much then as they do now.

Not Sloan and not Utah Jazz players. They play.

I remember during those two seasons Sloan's Jazz played in the NBA Finals
against the Bulls and lost both times. It was after one particularly horrific
effort in which the Jazz scored 54 points. Sloan wasn't exactly giddy at
practice the next day, but was enjoying himself. He said he couldn't wait to
see how his players responded. After all, that was what this was all about.
You get knocked down, you lose. It's how you deal with it.

Sloan didn't always deal with it well. He fumed and fought when he was a
player. There was a famous incident with Larry Kenon once when he was Bulls
coach, a chair shattering against a locker room wall, a player cowering in
fear. There was a suspension for bumping a ref a few years back. Sloan has a
temper. You still don't want your children watching a Jazz game if they can
read lips.

But much of the anger and seeming self destruction is gone, beaten out of him
during Bobbye's fight with cancer. Reporters around the NBA liked to say there
were two coaches who actually enjoyed the company of the media, who enjoyed
having a postgame beverage to talk about the game with the guys who might
criticize them: Rudy Tomjanovich and Jerry Sloan, the everymen. Both drank
a little too much after awhile and stopped, but they were men who didn't see
themselves better than anyone or more important because of their jobs and
their fame.

Sloan's teams practice hard, but not long. It's not about showing off or
impressing anyone. And the message is clear, if understated at times, though
not to the team. A few weeks back when Kobe Bryant hit the Jazz for a 30-point
quarter, Sloan offered afterward that it would have been much harder to do had
he been lying in his back at times. Nothing personal. Just how you play the
game.

I liked what Frank Layden said recently about Sloan closing in on 1,000 wins.
Sloan got the job replacing Layden and Layden said: "Nobody fights with Jerry
because you know the price would be too high. You might come out the winner,
at his age, you might even lick him, but you'd lose an eye, an arm, your
testicles in the process. Everything would be gone. I know you're going to
think I'm kidding when I say this, but I saw Jerry Sloan fight at the Alamo,
I saw him at Harpers Ferry, I saw him at Pearl Harbor. He's loyal. He's a
hard worker. He's a man."

When they asked Kirilenko about Sloan getting his 1,000th win, Kirilenko
said, "He's typical Russian coach, especially, like, old-generation coach."

So this Jazz team didn't treat Bryant like Stockton and Malone might have.
It's not that Sloan has actually mellowed, because the message is always the
same: Play, compete, give all you have, then you can go home without regret.
Though Sloan had plenty with the losses.

It took awhile with Stockton and Malone, getting the right fit, going through
Thurl Bailey and Jeff Malone until Jeff Hornacek became the ideal third wheel.
The Jazz is getting closer again, knocking out the Mavericks on Monday,
starting to look like the real thing, a Jerry Sloan team.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16179586/ 

Sam Smith writes regularly for MSNBC.com and is a columnist for
the Chicago Tribune.

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◆ From: 59.42.97.201
※ 編輯: RonnieBrewer    來自: 59.42.97.201         (12/15 17:33)
→ xjazz:They said Stockton, all 175 pounds of him, was dirty.
→ xjazz:He had to be dirty.      史隆的球員要會善用膝跟肘 ＠＠;
推 CarlosBoozer:Sam Smith~~
推 CarlosBoozer:double-double horse..... ><
→ kreen:= =
推 ammon:http://lowpost.net/blog/images/gurd/sloan_harp_sm.jpg
推 xjazz:= =
推 ammon:6217