In Defense of Jerry Sloan

It’s funny. Here I am, four days after writing my grand praise of Jerry Sloan—even getting quoted and linked to from ESPN—and now I’m writing a defense of his coaching in wake of Lakers game.

Why do it? Haven’t I already said everything there is to say? 

Well two things about the game and its aftermath really got me: 1) the astounding negativity and 2) accusations implying that Sloan is basically an imbecile—as if he’s basically Tweedle-dee in a suit (or Vinny Del Negro).

So here’s what I have to say about Jerry Sloan.

First of all, let’s all admit it was not a great game for the Jazz. It was neither well-played nor wonderfully coached. I wanted Fess in when the Jazz front line was playing like a 3-headed-ostrich. I’m still flabbergasted by Kyle Korver’s 6 minutes of playing time (though it’s so bizarre and otherworldly I can’t help but wonder if there was something else involved with that decision—something we aren’t aware of).

And I think we should all admit that we wanted that win more than we realized. So it was painful to see our guys get swatted like a bunch of directionless flies stuck on manure.

Still, that doesn’t mean Sloan’s an idiot. Nor does it mean we should gripe and whine our way to the end of what has been a surprisingly magical season.

So, here’s my defense.

Why doesn’t Fess play more, especially when he could possibly help? Or why not the KOOF? Why won’t the Jazz spend the time investing in them when they obviously need some front-court size and presence?

Here’s how to get significant playing time on a Jerry Sloan team:

1. Work hard in practice and take your job seriously—this leads to playing time
2. Work hard when playing and do what Sloan asks (set screens, go to your spots, go after loose balls, and rebound)—this leads to scoring opportunities and more playing time, including PT in important parts of the game
3. Work hard and contribute effectively within the team offense —this leads to becoming one of the primary team contributors

That’s it. That’s all any player needs to know to be successful on a Sloan-coached team.

AK-47 went through the steps and became successful. Same with Millsap, Memo, Boozer, Ronnie Brewer, Wesley Matthews, Ronnie Price, Matt Harpring, etc. You can even go back to Stockton, Hornacek, Bryon Russell, Adam Keefe, Antione Carr, Ty Corbin, Blue Edwards, Jarron Collins, and every successful player who ever came through on a Sloan-coached team.

Deron went through the steps (very painfully, it took a long time before he mastered step 1 to Jerry’s satisfaction). And you know what? I believe Deron’s a much better player because of it. He’s certainly much better than I ever imagined (I expected a Jason Kidd type, good, maybe even great, but not the otherworldly dazzle Deron gives us game after game after game).

Who didn’t master the steps? Chris Morris, Kirk Snyder, Gordan Giricek.

Who sort of went through the steps, but always fought them or couldn’t quite put them together right? Greg Ostertag, David Benoit, CJ Miles

Who went through the steps but then abandoned them? Shandon Anderson, Carlos Arroyo, Donyell Marshall.

Look at these lists again. Who was successful, even after leaving the Jazz? The first list. Who fell off the face of the NBA, despite their talent? Those who either wouldn’t do the steps in the first place or abandoned them later. Who did the Jazz give multiple chances to? Those who struggled to go through the steps, but still tried to do them.

So why doesn’t Fess play more? Because he’s NEVER adequately done step 1. After 3 years! 

Maybe we should rant more about this instead of complaining that Sloan won't put him in the game.

Sure, because of injuries Sloan has thrown him in to step 2, and he’s done decently, but that’s because Jerry’s hand was forced. But every time the injured player returned, all Fess had to do was go back and do step 1, and he’d be thrown in again. But he won’t do it. Instead he danced during timeouts, showed up late to practices, goofed around during shoot around, come back out late from the half-time break. It could be so easy for Fess to earn Sloan’s trust. He’s shown that he may cruise past step 2 to step 3, but he just won’t do step 1: the one step that anyone can do—even Araujo.

Is it fair to the other guys to give Fess a major role? No. Would the team chemistry be disrupted by showing favoritism to Fess and letting him skip the Sloan playing time process? I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s any way to know. But it’s certainly possible.

But here’s the most important thing:

A team can only regularly play 8-9 guys. It must have at least 13 on the roster. So a team must decide which 8-9 guys to really invest in. Sloan makes the decision simple: invest in those players willing and capable of going through all three steps. If he works hard, but can’t perform the coach’s requests in limited playing time, don’t invest (think of Araujo and the 2009-10 KOOF). If he won’t work to get through step 1, don’t invest (think Snyder and Fess to date).

It’s not that the Sloan’s too dumb to invest in big guys who could help the team. It’s that those big guys haven’t shown they’re going to be worth investing—at least not according to Sloan’s playing time rules.

The players are adults and should be able to handle being benched when playing like crap.

True. 

But …

We’re dealing with a unique situation. Millsap, Memo, and Boozer have willingly gone through all of Sloan’s steps to earning playing time. Fess, after 3 years, hasn’t done the first. So to give Fess playing time would undermine Sloan’s entire system for determining who plays and who doesn’t. 

Think about your boss, your coworkers, and your job. If your boss holds some employees to different standards of accountability and performance, doesn’t it affect the mood of the entire office? If you have a crummy day and your boss immediately gives your work to the office clown, aren’t you going to feel slighted, irritated, and angry? Even if you happen to like the clown?

Let’s say you’re a computer programmer. Now imagine being given a new project, say programming a revolutionary video editing program, that is hard and requires you to do and learn things you haven’t done yet. Now imagine after 1 or 2 days of it not working right, your boss gives up on you and gives the project to someone else—the office clown who shows up late every day, dinks around on Facebook during department meetings, and 9 times out of 10 doesn’t do nearly as good work as you—even though the deadline for completion is a year away.*

*The Jazz deadline was NOT Friday’s Laker’s game. It is NOT this year’s playoffs. The Jazz deadline is 2 years away—Deron’s final guaranteed year on his contract. That’s when the Jazz must be an elite team or face possible disaster.

How are you going to react? How will you respond mentally and emotionally the next time your boss gives you a hard project? Will you be excited to tackle the challenge, or will you freeze up, go crazy every time something doesn’t work right the first time?

Aren’t you an adult? Shouldn’t you be able to handle it?

The truth is we’re all just people. This kind of stuff affects us. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting $10 million a year for playing basketball or making $35,000 as an elementary school teacher, this kind of stuff makes a difference. Team/office chemistry matters. Confidence, fairness, and a boss who holds all employees to the same rules matters.

We don’t know if yanking Boozer, Memo, and Millsap would have had a bad effect on the team’s confidence and chemistry. But nobody can say it wouldn’t. And if we’re honest, nobody can really pull out the “they’re adults, they’re professionals, they should be able to handle it” card. Think about your own job and how you would react—and then remember that the Jazz players, like us, are just people. Every one of them younger than me.

The Jazz already have a serious confidence problem with the Lakers? How could yanking Memo, Millsap, and Boozer make it any worse?

Jerry often says that you learn more about a team after a loss than after a win. He often says that the most important thing is to see how the team responds to a tough loss. Do they “fell sorry for themselves” (my favorite Sloan-ism), or do they work harder to play as a team and improve?

Sloan’s really a pretty simple guy. Here’s the questions that matter to him:

• Are you working hard all the time?
• Are you doing what you’re asked to do? (Jarron Collins made millions just doing this)
• How do you react to challenges? How do you react when things don’t go your way?

That Lakers game was a perfect case of things not going the Jazz way. The Lakers knocked the Jazz out of the playoffs the past 2 seasons. In 2008, it was a hard-fought, good series. 2009 was disgusting—a Laker rout and Jazz roll-over-belly-up.

Now look at this year’s games:

Game 1: Tight game until late 3rd quarter. Lakers blitzkrieg, Jazz whimper and die.

Game 2: Jazz win. Kobe plays crummy, Jazz frontline plays very mediocre, but the Lakers never really put up a challenge.

Game 3: Lakers, without Kobe, destroy the Jazz. Lakers blitzkrieg in the 1st quarter, and the Jazz never get closer than 13 the rest of the way, whimpering in the fetal position like Greg Ostertag.

Game 4: Lakers blitzkrieg in the 1st quarter, Jazz frontline hasn’t even shown up. But here’s where things went differently: the Jazz fought. They played their guts out to get within 4 at the start of the 4th quarter. Now, they didn’t play brilliantly, but they played hard. Boozer came back from a terrible start to put out a decent game—his offensive rebounds and tips in the 3rd were huge. Millsap made several good back-door cuts for easy buckets. Memo … didn’t ever play all that well, but oh well.

The point is, the Jazz reacted to the challenge in a good way. Maybe not perfectly, but decently. They fought. They went down kicking and screaming. Even when the Lakers went on the big run after the Jazz pulled within 4, I never felt like our guys gave up trying.

It was a classic game in which things didn’t go their way. This time they didn’t roll over.

So the game was a marginal success. They didn’t win. And I don’t think it was some kind of “moral victory” to just to keep the score close for 3+ quarters. But it was a small step in the right direction. It was a better response than in the past.

And maybe because I’m a teacher a lot of what Sloan does makes sense to me. He seems to see things like a teacher. You don’t yank people and overreact to less-stellar performance if you see signs of things improving. You don’t yank people when a serious challenge presents itself—you wait to see how they respond to the challenge.* And if the response is in the right direction, well that gives you something to build on.

* Some may say the challenge was already there—the challenge was playing the Lakers in the first place. True. But that's not the only way to look at it. The Lakers had a terrible road trip, they weren’t playing well even they won, and the truth is any NBA team can beat any other NBA team on any given night. If the Jazz had started well and the Lakers stunk the Jazz would have won, but there would have been no reaction to a challenge to gauge. But when the Jazz came out kind of flat, when the Lakers played like they realized how desperately they needed a good win, that’s when the challenge presented itself.

* * * * *

So there’s my defense. It wasn’t a great game for the Jazz. It wasn’t a wonderfully-coached game. I still don’t get the Korver benching. I wonder what would have happened if Fess had been brought out for just some kind of a different look.

But Sloan’s decisions are not only defensible, but they are very intelligently and thoughtfully based.

You may not agree that his rules for earning playing time are the best, but please don’t argue that he divvies it out arbitrarily or based on who he randomly likes or doesn’t like.

You may think that there are other and/or better ways to help players develop, but don’t insist Sloan's methods don’t work at all.

You may not agree that Fess and Koof don’t deserve investing, but don’t claim that Sloan’s lack of investment in them is either random or brainless—as if he doesn’t realize how much they could help the team if they got better. He’s still waiting for them to show him that they will do what is necessary to become quality players—and he’s giving them opportunities to prove it. Maybe not as many opportunities as you’d like. Maybe not the kind of opportunities you think would be best. But they’re still there. 

You may not agree that benching Booze, Memo, and Millsap for Fess would screw up team chemistry and team confidence, but don’t insist playing Fess in this situation doesn’t have the possibility of doing it.

You may not agree that the Lakers game showed a team that responds to challenges at least better than in the past, but please don’t claim that it’s an invalid way to see the game.

You may think that playing the Lakers in LA was challenge enough to gauge the players’ response to a challenge, but please don’t contend that watching them respond to their flat start wasn’t also a potentially valid challenge/response.

* * * * *

All I know is that I wish all the bosses and supervisors I’ve ever had worked as fairly, as intelligently, and as simply as Jerry Sloan.

And whatever you do, please don’t rant about refs and little coaching decisions so much that it detracts from what has been one of my favorite Jazz seasons ever—a much better and more fun season than I ever expected it to be.

And let’s all raise a cup to hoping the Jazz put in a good run to end the season, a good run in the playoffs, and that if/when they meet the Lakers our guys knock the Kobes into a pile of manure and Fess comes in to step on all their heads.