Utah Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan: Tragic Protagonist

They say that a boy never really becomes a man until his father dies. If this is true, Jerry Sloan became a man when he was four years old. This may have been the first major disappointment in his life, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

Jerry was the first player to have his number retired by the Chicago Bulls. That came as more of a salute to his rabid underdog intimidation of opponents and a "sacrifice your personal physical health for the team" playing style in a generation that held such personality traits in high regard, than to his actual stats or athletic ability.

The physical nature of his game might have shortened a good career, but without hard picks, three-point plays, and scrappy rebounding, there is no career at all. 

Christened "The Original Bull" by sportswriters, Sloan's number hangs in the rafters in Chicago like a flag for a fallen soldier of a lost war.

Despite winning an all time record of more than one thousand basketball games as coach of the small market NBA juggernaut Utah Jazz, he has never really been recognized as a success by his peers in the Coach of the Year voting.

Coach Sloan has amassed nearly as many wins as Hubie Brown, Sam Mitchell, and Gregg Popovich combined. I list those three because each has edged Sloan for the Red Auerbach Coach of the Year award in recent seasons. Sloan also has more wins than the legendary Celtics coach for which the award is named.

NBA.com doesn’t list him in their top 10, but instead has seven coaches with lower winning percentages and nine coaches with fewer total wins on its all-time NBA coaching list. I call these snubs a tragedy, but Jerry disagrees. He cares as much about his peers’ opinions as he does about his players’ feelings.

When a sportswriter asked him about the inconsistent play of 19-year old starting guard CJ Miles he said, “We can’t put diapers on him one night and a jockstrap on him the next.” He isn’t very interested in what the league thinks either. Sloan leads NBA coaches in all-time technical fouls.

Besides, tragedy would be something like your high school sweetheart dying of cancer after 41 years of marriage. Jerry publicly dealt with six years of his wife fighting cancer by getting a little misty-eyed and choked up during a press conference on the topic, starting a charity for the cause, and then going back to work.

When asked where his cornered hyena tenacity comes from, he traces it back to his father dying. From the age of four, he realized that he was on his own. "Nobody’s gonna raise you, you’ve gotta raise yourself." His mother was busy working to financially support him…and nine other siblings. His coaching style and key player choices are soaked with these philosophies.

Utah, with its small market and budget, has trouble attracting and keeping big name talent, so Jerry doesn’t bother chasing them. Many top draft options over the years have publicly stated they would never play in Salt Lake City.

This is just fine with Jerry. He would probably force a trade within one season of picking up an Allen Iverson or Dennis Rodman, both of whom were considered in trade deals at one time. He prefers to coach underdogs with something to prove to themselves and the rest of the world every night. Guys like John Stockton, Carlos Boozer, Jeff Hornacek, and Karl Malone suit his style much better.

Nobody can argue that the Utah Jazz’s coach for life, Jerry Sloan, is soft. If some ignorant fool attempted to suggest such a thing in Jerry’s presence, it would likely result in expletive decorated tirade preceding a head butt to the nose. Not that this behavior makes him any more of a man, it’s just who Jerry Sloan is.

His reputation for being a foul-mouthed, hard-nosed, no B.S. basketball coach has surprisingly endeared him to his ultra-conservative franchise owner Larry Miller. Miller, who recently turned the franchise management reigns over to his son due to illness, has rarely attended basketball games on Sunday due to his Mormon religion. He has, however, entrusted Jerry with his $350 million franchise for over 20 years, even when the fans have not.

It seems absurd that the longest tenured coach for any team in any professional sports league ever has fans who question his worthiness for such a position.

The only legitimate criticism of Jerry is that he hasn’t won an NBA championship. Twice John Stockton and Karl Malone took him to the NBA Finals, but twice they lost to Michael Jordan’s Bulls.

Immediately following these and, it seems, every season, local sports media outlets float the idea fart that it might be time for the Utah Jazz to find a new coach. Every season it smells just as bad as the offseason before. And every autumn Sloan returns to coach the Jazz, usually leading them deeper into the playoffs than anyone expects.

Jerry believes, as most people do, that his successes in life are due to his unique life experiences and he works daily to pass this knowledge to his players.

This season, Utah may have the finest collection of highly regarded individual athletes the Jazz have ever assembled; the question is whether they can be lead by a coach with the exact opposite background, values, coaching philosophies and personality, to an NBA title.

Sloan has built a life and legend on being the lunch bucket carrying coach who isn’t interested in acceptance or driven by accolades. As much as actually winning an NBA title would mean to the fans, franchise, players, and city, it would require an entire re-write of the theme of Jerry’s existence.

His life’s circumstances have shaped him positively into a man that all men wish they were.

Clint Eastwood plays this man in the movies.

There is usually redemption in the end for the protagonist in a well written movie.

Real life may not be so kind to Coach Sloan.