Eight years ago, Jerry Sloan walked out of the gym during a Utah Jazz practice. He was upset over the divisiveness within his team. The belief among several members of the organization was that some players were rallying around backup point guard Mark Jackson at the expense of starter John Stockton. That's why Sloan threatened to retire then and there.
Sloan was dissuaded at an emergency meeting called by team owner Larry Miller, president Dennis Haslam, general manager Kevin O'Connor and Sloan's wife, Bobbye. "That had the real potential of Jerry saying, 'To heck with it,' and walking away," Miller told me in 2003. Miller believed Sloan's pent-up frustration with the team had led to his seven-game suspension that season for shoving a referee.
Eight years later, the Jazz weren't able to keep Sloan from retiring at age 68. The reason Sloan had taken to signing single-season contracts to stay with Utah, year after year after year, was to underline his freedom. At his age he didn't want to commit beyond the horizon, and -- in a way that showed how different he was from other NBA coaches -- the short commitment gave him power. While other coaches on one-year deals would have been viewed as lame ducks who lacked the support of management, Sloan's willingness to walk away at any time gave him the appearance of strength in his locker room, because it meant the players couldn't get him fired. He would rather walk away from his career than give that kind of power to the players.
That's why I think it is wrong to connect the dots of Deron Williams' acknowledged skirmishes with Sloan and draw a picture of the star player forcing the legendary coach out of office. Going back to 2003, Sloan has known it was going to end this way, suddenly, when he was no longer interested in meeting the terms of his job description. He set those terms for himself, and he decided when he wanted to leave.
The funny thing about Sloan and Williams is how much they share in common. Each is tough and stubborn and lives according to his own code. That sense of code is rare in a league that makes millionaires of players and coaches alike. Who wouldn't be willing to compromise to keep the money flowing in?
We all know of Sloan's principles, which were recognized as he maintained control of his franchise for decade after decade, but which were never fully appreciated -- he never once won a Coach of the Year award, after all. But Williams is just as stubbornly principled. I think most NBA coaches would tell you that Williams is the best -- surely the most versatile -- point guard in the league, and yet why do we rarely see him on TV as an endorser of products? It is because he has not been willing to sell himself. He refuses to put on an act for the cameras. He is his own man, and he commands respect.
Both Sloan and Williams have long memories. To this day Sloan seethes at the uproar in his locker room in 2003. To this day, too, Williams seethes that Sloan brought him off the bench for 33 games as a rookie, when Williams was certain he should have been starting ahead of Keith McLeod and Milt Palacio. Much good has happened for the careers of Sloan since '03 and for Williams since '05, yet neither was willing to sell out his principles. That's why they were been lucky to have each other, as much as their dueling point of views would collide over what was best for the team.
The NBA has been weakened by the departures of Sloan and assistant Phil Johnson, because now the Jazz are at risk of becoming nothing more than another small-market team. The franchise was eventually defined by Sloan's values. The Jazz succeeded because they knew which players could be married to Sloan's style of play as well as to his personality. Now their players and front office must adapt to sudden replacement Tyrone Corbin, who must be given time to develop his own voice as a rookie head coach. Remember what became of Green Bay after Vince Lombardi moved away, and to Alabama when Bear Bryant retired? Can the Jazz avoid the same kind of uncertainty as they plot a new direction?
There will never be another Jerry Sloan, because no one may ever again be able to coach the same professional franchise for 23 seasons. But it is going too far to say that his principles are leaving with him, that something has died, because that means the other 29 NBA coaches are lacking in principle.
Has financial success changed the NBA? And did the pressures of so much money create a new culture of player power -- driven by guaranteed contracts and unrestricted free agency -- that helped convince Sloan it was time to leave? The answers are yes and yes. But it is also wrong to forget that the financial growth of the NBA made a lot of money for Sloan as well as for Williams. All NBA coaches now profit from their torment: It is one compromise worth making. More than he ever could have imagined when he became coach of the Jazz in 1988, Jerry Sloan could afford to walk away.
