推 sam369: 02/05 00:32
推 CarlosBoozer:Harpring友情客串 02/05 09:27
Thorough examination
Quiz hits on Sloan
by Ian Thomsen
Posted: Friday February 2, 2007 11:37AM
僅節錄有關Sloan教練員之部份
1. How does Jerry Sloan do it?
ANSWER: The game has changed, and Sloan has not.
The game is richer, younger, more athletic, less schooled. Sloan is older.
His knees are bad and his back is sore when he wakes up each morning. "I feel
old just trying to get out of bed; that's why I stay in there a long time,"
he says. "But if I do my exercises every day, that helps me a little bit."
He has been running the Utah Jazz for 19 years as the longest-serving coach
with one team in pro sports. He recently moved ahead of Larry Brown to become
the NBA's fourth-winningest coach (1,014-675). His winning percentage of .600
ranks Sloan behind only six coaches who have won 500 games or more. Since his
promotion to Utah's head coach in December 1988, there have been 187
head-coaching changes by other teams.
How is it that a 64-year-old with aching joints has melded a Turkish center
(Mehmet Okur), a skinny Russian shot-blocker (Andrei Kirilenko), an
undersized Dukie (Carlos Boozer) and a second-year heir to John Stockton
(Deron Williams) into the fourth-best team in the league as well as the
favorite to earn Sloan his sixth divisional title?
"He always says, 'You don't have a role. Your role is to play basketball,' "
says forward Matt Harpring, now is in his fifth year with Sloan at Utah. "You
know, he's kind of right. I've been on other teams where they try to define
your role, that you're supposed to defend and rebound, or whatever. Our role
here is that you play the game of basketball the way it's supposed to be
played, you play hard, and you'll be fine."
But how does Sloan relate to modern players who all too often are rewarded
with money and fame before they've learned the fundamentals of the game?
"Money has changed the attitudes some," says Sloan. "But if you're a guy who
really wants to play, money doesn't affect you.
"I think there's a bigger emphasis on entertainment over winning; that's one
thing we look at. I realize players come in and they feel like this is an
entertainment business," and here Sloan smiles to take the edge off what he
clearly considers to be a nasty phrase. "But if the players want to get
better, the money will not faze them."
It's always been that way and always will be.
"We had problems back when I played. There were guys who worked hard and guys
who didn't work hard. But if they'd all worked hard, I'd have never played,"
and he laughs the same laugh again. "I didn't have enough talent compared to
them."
Which is to say that everything he's earned he owes to the players who
haven't tried as hard as they could -- whether Sloan was a Chicago Bulls
guard from 1966 to '76, a Bulls coach who was fired midway through his third
year (in '82, with a record of 94-121) or now a coach in Utah, where his
jutting nose and cheeks resemble the natural rock formations of the Wasatch
Range overlooking Salt Lake City.
"He demands respect, and in this time and age in the NBA, I'm guessing, a lot
of [coaches] don't have the respect that he demands and that he has,"
Harpring says. "He's not like a young coach that's coming in and trying to
show guys what to do. He's been here, he knows what he's doing, he's coached
Karl Malone and John Stockton, so the respect issue is there. I don't think
you can be a good coach in this league without the players respecting you.
"Right or wrong, it doesn't matter. He's the first one to tell you, 'I might
be right or wrong, but this is what I believe.' Being the coach, you can't
always be right. You're going to make some bad decisions. The good thing is
you know where he's coming from. He'll tell you straight up, there's no b.s.,
no politics. If you're playing bad he'll come up to you and say, 'You're not
playing well right now. We need you to play better.' He's not afraid to call
people out.
"And he tells you from Day One, 'I'm going to be here.' Unless Larry Miller,
our owner, fires him [which is never going to happen], it's: 'I'm going to be
here. I've been here a long time, I don't know about you guys.' You kind of
know you'd better learn to adapt."
But Sloan isn't afraid to adapt either. His feelings for his 10-year-old
stepson are proof of that (more on this later) ...
6. So what can we learn about Jerry Sloan from his 10-year-old stepson?
ANSWER: His name is Rhett, and he's 54 years younger than his stepfather.
Last September, in a small private ceremony, Sloan married the former Tammy
Jessop. Sloan's first wife, Bobbye, died of pancreatic cancer in '04.
"It's been great," Sloan says of his new son. "He's a wonderful boy and he's
a fun kid. I've enjoyed being around him."
Dealing with players in their 20s and 30s is child's play compared with
helping to raise a son who is more than a half-century his junior.
"I wouldn't want to run with him; he's quicker than greased lightning," says
Sloan. "He's a really quick kid. He played football this year for the first
time, and he's playing Junior Jazz basketball [a local kids program], and
he's having fun. But he loves motorcycles, the motocross -- he jumps them and
rides them, and I just hope he doesn't get hurt. He's a fearless kid, even
when he plays football -- he weighs 59 pounds. And you know how most kids
will go out and hug you and grab you? He'll hit you.
"It's fun to watch kids compete, you know. The ones that will and ones that
won't."
Hidden somewhere in those sentences is the secret behind Sloan's ability to
relate to younger people. Is it that he worries less about who they are and
more about what they do? That he revels in the shared interests while
ignoring the baggy jeans, tattoos and music?
Perhaps it is simply that he knows when to coach and when to keep his mouth
shut. One player he doesn't coach is his stepson.
"No, I don't get involved with that," he says. "I didn't with my kids [he and
Bobbye had three children]. I think that's a conflict. I just like to be a
good friend with him and not screw it up with sports. If he wants to play,
it's up to him.
"But he loves basketball, he loves to watch a game. He came to a [Jazz] game
and he told his mom the other night, 'That was the greatest game I've ever
seen in my life.' It's fun to watch kids."
While Sloan is willing to live and work in younger environments, he doesn't
expect young people to care much for his interests. He would be shocked, for
example, if Andrei Kirilenko asked to look under the hoods of the 60 tractors
that Sloan keeps on farmland in southern Illinois (to be continued) ...
9. How can one man own 60 tractors?
ANSWER: "It's probably 50 or 60,'' says Jerry Sloan. "I have about 3,000 acres
of farmland (in his southern Illinois hometown of McLeansboro). I bought farms
that have buildings on them, and I've done some work on them, fixed them up
a little bit, so I can store stuff in there.''
That doesn't exactly answer the question.
"I just like to fiddle around with junk,'' Sloan says. "I've always messed
with junk, I don't know why. My first wife, Bobbye, before she passed away,
we collected antiques for years. So we were kind of like Sanford and Son.
"It's fun to see what they are every time you look at one, see what they've
got,'' he says of the tractors. "I had a guy give me a tractor the other day.
That's the best buy I ever had. They'd gotten tired of it -- this is just an
old tractor. They called the office and said they've got a tractor, would you
be interested?''
How much time does he spend with the tractors?
"As much as I can,'' Sloan says. "It gets tough driving back and forth or
flying back and forth. I don't know how much time I'll spend now, because I
remarried and my wife lives in Utah. She works every day.''
He thinks about that for a minute and his face goes blank, and he says:
"I may get to spend more.''
12. One more thing about Jerry Sloan: Has he ever sold any of his tractors?
ANSWER: "No, I never sell them," he says. "Well, I sold one. It wasn't
anything, just a $1,500 tractor.
"I wish I hadn't sold it."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/ian_thomsen/
02/01/weekly.quiz/index.html
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