Jerry Sloan: The Best Coach To Never Win a Championship

Today the great Jerry Sloan stepped down as head coach of the Utah Jazz.  Jerry was the longest tenured active coach in professional sports.  I was fortunate enough to live in Utah during much of that run and got to watch Sloan coach.

During that time John Stockton and Karl Malone, two of the greatest players in NBA history were mainstays of the team.  Stockton ran Sloan's offense to perfection and set records as a point guard that may stand forever.  He and Sloan seemed to be always on the same page and under Sloan's leadership Stockton became, arguably, the finest pure point guard the NBA has ever seen. 

Karl Malone developed into one of the best power forwards to ever play the game, and like Stockton, flourished in Sloan's offense.  During the height of Malone's and Stockton's careers, Michael Jordan called them the best one-two punch in basketball.

Jerry Sloan helped these two great players reach their potential, but even when Stockton and Malone had retired, Sloan still found a way to get the most out of the personnel he had.  Under Coach Sloan the Jazz have been a perennial playoff team no matter what players were on the floor. 

The Jazz didn't buy up every talented player like the Lakers, Celtics or Heat in order to have success, they relied on Coach Sloan to get greatness out of the personnel they had.  That is truly the mark of a great coach...being able to take the personnel you are given and get the best out of them.  In fact, it's been common for Coach Sloan got more out of his team than it appeared they should be able to give. 

Jerry Sloan had his team on the cusp of a championship several times only to see the hopes dashed, at times by the narrowest of margins.  And I say without reservation that Jerry Sloan is the greatest coach to never win a championship in NBA history.  But that doesn't actually say enough.

With all coach Sloan was able to accomplish regardless of the players he had to put on the floor, a strong case could be made that he was the greatest coach ever, period, regardless of championship wins.  And with his retirement, something that tied the present NBA to the past NBA of Stockton, Malone, Jordan, Bird, Magic Johnson, and the other greats seems to have gone with him.

He will be sorely missed.