Finally time to recognize Utah’s Sloan - 猶他爵士 Utah Jazz

Finally time to recognize Utah's Sloan
Jazz coach will probably be named best of year, for his consistency

OPINION
By Bob Cook
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 9:01 p.m. ET April 19, 2007

Like the legendary director Martin Scorsese finally winning an Oscar this
year for his good-but-not-great "The Departed," the legendary coach Jerry
Sloan this year will finally win a Coach of the Year award for his
good-but-not-great 2006-07 Utah Jazz.

In the case of both Scorsese and Sloan, the award reflects more of a capstone
for career achievement rather than a reward for individual work. In each
case, the honor is bestowed out of sympathy and guilt for having passed over
the man for so long, and out of fear that his passage north of 65 years old
means there is not much time left to applaud his work.

Also in both cases, the award does not fundamentally change the man.

Just like Scorsese will always be the fast-talking New York film buff at
heart, Sloan will always be the miserable, grumbling Midwestern cuss he has
always been.

The big difference is that at least Scorsese seemed to enjoy and bask in his
moment of glory. Sloan is more likely to chuck the award in the McLeansboro,
Ill., farmhouse closet on his way to the flea market than he is hold it
upward in triumph. Sloan will find more satisfaction shining one of his
vintage tractors than buffing his trophy.

Some of that reaction is because Sloan, in his 19th season and counting as
the longest-tenured coach with a single franchise in all of American pro
sports, has thrived by having a personality that demands the spotlight not
be turned on him.

But another reason is because Sloan himself is saying that this year, despite
clinching the Northwest Division title and Utah's first playoff berth since
the Stockton-to-Malone combo broke up after the 2002-03 season, is his most
miserable yet. Of all days to announce this, he picked March 28 ─ his 65th
birthday.

"This has been the toughest season I've ever had. ... It's just the different
things that have happened," the Salt Lake Tribune quoted Sloan as saying
after a team shootaround. "I think it's been a very difficult season. The
expectations we have for each other, maybe. In my business, you never know if
you measure up to that. There have been some disappointments. There have been
some good things, as well."

Sloan is refusing to discuss why he has found this season ─ and not, say,
the 26-56 2004-05 season that is his only losing record in Utah ─ to be so
difficult. So with Sloan leaving us to engage in rank speculation, let us
rankly speculate on why this year has been so difficult.

Some of this year's difficulties ─ getting a young, inexperienced team to
mesh, making up for the sudden decline and fall of Andrei Kirilenko ─ has
shown the sweat that makes people vote you Coach of the Year.

With power forward Carlos Boozer finally healthy in his third year in Utah,
with Deron Williams' emergence at point guard showing why the Jazz traded up
to take him over Chris Paul in the 2005 draft, with Mehmet Okur developing
into an All-Star center who is an inside-outside scoring threat, with rookie
backup Paul Millsap showing the spark that could make him the next great
Louisiana Tech-bred big man in Utah, Sloan has finally had the talent
available to overcome three previous seasons of Karl Malone-less and John
Stockton-less mediocrity, or worse.

Sloan should get no small credit for getting this group to work together.
Sloan's players will tell you he treats his players equally ─ like dogs.
Actually, Sloan probably treats dogs better. But Sloan gets respect because
he doesn't play head games, making clear what is expected, and how he will
react. If you don't play hard, concentrate on defense and run the plays
right, Sloan will rip you. If you do play hard, concentrate on defense and
run the plays right, Sloan will rip you, too, just to keep you honest.

However, Sloan rarely has players tune out on him, Rick Carlisle-style,
because he understands the NBA is a player's league, not a coach's league.

Sloan has proven that with his recent adaptability. For example, after
trying and failing to make Okur a low-post center, Sloan has let the Turkish
7-footer roam, so much so that Okur has set the franchise's season record
for 3-pointers. Players also have said they have noticed a mellowing in Sloan
this season, perhaps in part to his new marriage to a Utah woman, a few years
after his wife and high-school sweetheart Bobbye died of pancreatic cancer in
2004.

Still, Sloan is hardly babying his players. Ask Kirilenko, who has been in
a season-long slump since moving to small forward to accommodate Boozer.

Kirilenko's scoring average (15.0 to 8.5) and rebounding average (8.0 to 4.7)
have dropped nearly in half from 2005-06 to this season. Kirilenko has
complained about his lack of getting the ball, but Sloan hasn't refigured
his offense to boost him. (That point became moot, anyway, last week, when
Kirilenko went down with an injured left thumb that could put him out until
the start of the playoffs.)

Difficulties off the court take toll

Other difficulties ─ getting ripped by John Amaechi as at the least a
subhuman, at most a just-short-of-Tim-Hardaway homophobe, dealing with
off-court incidents to the point Sloan recently put a curfew on his players
for the first time in his career ─ have provided evidence for those who
think this might finally be the year (after nearly a decade of speculation)
Sloan retires from his $7-million-a-year job.

The off-court trouble started early, with a preseason incident involving a
strip-club dancer in Portland who claimed four players raped her. They were
cleared, but Sloan was spooked, especially because this wasn't the first
season in recent memory his players have been implicated in illegal activity.
So in January, Sloan instituted a midnight curfew on the road, though loosely
enforced. Still, if a player is caught out after curfew, he could get hit
where he really hurts ─ by having his video games taken away.

More troubling for Sloan personally was his ugly cameo in Amaechi's book,
"Man in the Middle," in which the former NBA center said, in a rare move by
a male athlete in team sports, he is gay. Amaechi depicts Sloan, for whom he
played in 2003, as a stark-raving despot, a brilliant coaching technician
(though Amaechi criticizes Sloan for not adapting his style to suit Amaechi's
game) who is the worst human being he's ever met. In later interviews,
Amaechi said he learned Sloan threw derogatory homosexual epithets in his
direction behind his back.

"People need to stop pretending that he is this benevolent old granddad ─
he just isn't," Amaechi told VIBE magazine.

Sloan has said he doesn't remember any unusual dustups with Amaechi, and
told reporters regarding if it would matter if he had known Amaechi was gay:
"Oh yeah, it would have probably mattered. I don't know exactly, but I always
have peoples' feelings at heart. People do what they want to do. I don't
have a problem with that."

Hits to his reputation aside, Sloan's current concern is his fading team.
The Jazz has been streaky ever since they started the year with a 12-1 start.
But Utah is streaking in the wrong direction. It has lost 10 of its last 15,
including five of six since clinching its division title. Utah has lost its
last four, all against losing teams, twice while blowing second-half leads
of 17 or more.

Kirilenko's thumb injury and Williams' strained groin, which he is playing
through, have slowed down the Jazz, as has young players such as Millsap
hitting the rookie wall. Then again, such a dive might get Sloan's players
to start listening to him again.

Even if they don't, Sloan has performed well enough this year to get that
Coach of the Year award he's missed out on through more than 1,000
regular-season victories and two NBA Finals appearances. Maybe for one night,
he can relax and celebrate Scorsese-style and be thankful for getting a
tangible reward for a long-storied career, even if it isn't for what will be
remembered as his most acclaimed season.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18032108

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