Posts tagged ‘jerry sloan’

The end of the Slam Dunk contest on Saturday night signified the end of any Washington Wizards involvement here at NBA All-Star weekend in Los Angeles.  My plan was to attend the game, tweet a little during, and then hang around the media scrum afterward to see if I could snag something interesting.  Luckily for me, something interesting fell right into my lap involving Deron Williams of the Utah Jazz.

First, a little background.  A week and a half ago when Jerry Sloan resigned, there were rumors and reports that Williams was the reason.  At halftime of a game against the Bulls, Williams and Sloan had argued (as they had several times during the year, and as Sloan has done with other players, such as Karl Malone, many times before), and when Sloan retired the next morning, Williams was essentially blamed. He was not happy about it at all. Williams lashed out at the media and named names over the radio airwaves on KFAM 1320AM:

All those guys, Ric Bucher, Chris Broussard, they’re all in our locker room everyday.  I’ll let them report what they want to report, that’s what they are paid to do. That’s why I’m always short and rude with the media, because they’re your friend. Ric comes in and sits by me every time I see him, acts like he’s my friend, but the day they find something they want to spin, they jump on it. That’s why I am the way I am and will continue to be the way I am.

I had just talked to Williams about a month earlier in Washington, and he was nothing but forthcoming to both myself and David Aldridge.  Even when I talked to Williams after the All-Star practice this past Saturday, he didn’t appear short or rude. Rather, his answers were expansive and thoughtful, and I appreciated his time.

But Sunday, after the All-Star game, Williams was asked about something Ken Berger of CBS Sports.com, had written in an article earlier that evening.  Berger wrote the following: Read more »

Flip Saunders watches his Washington Wizards go through a basic shell drill before facing the San Antonio Spurs.

[photo: K. Weidie, TAI - Feb. 12, 2011]

Flip Saunders is currently tied with Doug Moe for 20th on the all-time NBA head coaching wins list with 628, 11 victories away from passing Chuck Daly. Upon resigning from his position with the Utah Jazz, Jerry Sloan falls third on the list behind Don Nelson and Lenny Wilkens with 1,221 wins; and it doesn’t appear he will be caught by Phil Jackson, fifth all-time with 1,136 wins, as the coach who has led his teams to a record 11 NBA titles is set to retire after this season.

Saunders is now fifth in wins among active coaches, trailing Jackson, George Karl (1,017), Rick Adelman (927) and Gregg Popovich (781). Flip clearly ranks highly in the NBA coaching fraternity. So on Saturday before his team faced the San Antonio Spurs, and the new Dean of NBA head coaches (Popovich is in his 15th season coaching the Spurs), Saunders’ opinion of the sudden resignation of Sloan was a good one to solicit.

“One, you hate to see someone like him step away because he’s meant so much to the game. He’s meant a lot to younger coaches when they come in the league. He’s been very up front with them in trying to help coaches, and always very accessible. As coaches and as teachers, we respect how he taught the game. He believed the game should be played one way, and he wasn’t going to veer away from that. No matter who played for him, there was a certain style they were going to play, and you were going to have to adapt and adjust as far as to his style.

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I am fully aware that Truth About It is a Washington D.C.-based blog that mainly focuses on the ups, downs, in and outs of the Washington Wizards.  In fact, even when I write a “From The Other Side” article about the opposing teams, I still try to slant the coverage in the Wizards’ direction.

But I feel confident in speaking for everyone who writes at Truth About It, when I say that we are basketball fans first and foremost.   We watch the Wizards religiously, but we get just as much satisfaction from watching Ray Allen hit a record breaking three-pointer, or seeing JJ Redick get shaken out of his shorts by Randy Foye. There is so much to appreciate around the league, and to operate in a Wizards vacuum would be a crying shame.

So from the time I read about Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan keeping the media waiting after the Jazz lost to the Chicago Bulls Wednesday night, to the moment I saw tears in his eyes as he announced his resignation, I simply could not believe what I was seeing.  I had watched this seemingly unflappable man on the Jazz bench, since 1988, when I was a 13-year-old ninth grader.  And now here he was acting a bit out character after a game, and following it up with a tearful resignation.

I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Sloan a few times during my three years of covering the NBA, and I have no problems admitting he was quite the intimidating man.  The initial time I saw him in 2008,  I was in my first year as a writer for Hoops Addict still trying to find my way around, and he was in the Wizards media room, enjoying a pre-game meal.  I had this to say after that experience:

I talked to Utah Jazz Head Coach Jerry Sloan before the game and he is as an intense, intimidating person as you will ever see.  When I saw him eating dinner with the press and talking to some of the Wizards Event Staff, he was friendly, smiling, and he seemed to be a man at peace. He walks with a slight limp, but his 65-year-old, 6-foot-5 inch frame moves so slow, it is barely noticeable. But when the cameras were on him and the discussions turned towards his team, it was as if as a switch triggered in him mind.  He was attentive, he folded his arms and whoever asked him a question would get his full attention until that question was thoroughly answered. Coach Sloan didn’t look down at the ground, or around the hallway; he had his glare firmly set on the person he was talking to. When I asked him a question he looked right at me during the entire 90 seconds, and did not look away from me until I said thank you. Very intimidating. When I asked him how the team was dealing with the loss of Mehmet Okur, who is back in his home country of Turkey to tend to his father, Sloan said, “What am I going to do? Cry about it? No. I have to come out, coach who’s here, and try to win.”

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{K. Weidie}

John Wall has shown signs that he’s starting to hit that dreaded rookie wall.  He’s been struggling to fight off injuries, and as a result, his aggressiveness, his explosiveness and his ability to defend opposing point guards has suffered. I’ve been watching basketball long enough to know that all rookies go through this type adversity at some point, let alone rookies who are assigned the arduous task of running a team and saving a franchise. With the Utah Jazz in town to face the Wizards on Martin Luther King afternoon, I knew I would have the opportunity to get some point guard perspective from three different members of that model franchise.

Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan instructed Hall of Fame point guard John Stockton for 15 seasons, and he’s coached All-Star Deron Williams for six. Williams is in the ‘best point guard in the league’ discussion along with Chris Paul, Derrick Rose and Rajon Rondo. His backup, Earl Watson, was coached by former Sonics great point guard Nate McMillan and mentored by a future Hall of Famer Gary Payton.

Among those three men, I was sure I could learn the traits of a good point guard, what Wall might be going through right now and get a good assessment of how he’s progressing almost halfway through the season.

Before the game, Sloan talked about how little the Wall/Williams match-up meant to him, and how important intelligence is to playing point guard:

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On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2007 Gilbert Arenas hit a game-winner walking away against the Utah Jazz in Washington… barely looked to see if it went in. Tough shot against a tough player in Deron Williams.

Four years later, the consistency of the Utah franchise and a Jerry Sloan-led team continues to carry an air of toughness wherever they go. The Wizards franchise remains in vastly different territory, with a fan base yearning for something they’ve never really known, that same toughness and consistency Utah always conveys.

“This is going to be a great test because this is by far the most physical team that we’ve faced,” said Wizards coach Flip Saunders before this afternoon’s game. “The other teams we’ve faced, Orlando and Miami, they’re good teams and they’re good defensive teams, but they don’t have the physicality of what a Utah has, and they do a lot because they have such great talent — a LeBron James and Dwyane Wade can take the game over — this team has a guy in Deron Williams who can take the game over, and [Al] Jefferson can do some things inside, but they’re so much better as a whole, such a great offensive execution team.”

As much as Sloan exhumes the toughness of his team, his second great point guard, Williams, carries that message while on the court.

“He’s tough, hard-nosed. Offensively, he knows how to run a team, he’s aggressive. He’s one of those guards who will sneak up behind you, set a good screen,” Wizards backup big man Hilton Armstrong told me before the game.

A point guard who a big man has to watch out for in setting screens? A differentiator in this era of great NBA point leaders.

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It was like that part in Hoosiers when Coach Norman Dale discretely asked the ref to kick him out of the game so that Shooter the Drunk could take over with a chance at redemption. Last night against the Lakers, there was no drunk, the Jazz just had their final run squashed, and Jerry Sloan asked the ref to kick him out by calling him a mutherfucker. Could Sloan’s coaching career be over? Not like Hoosiers at all.

@ Mohawks Meeting Swarth

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