I don't think that I have unreasonable expectations; not even I was bold enough to say that the Jazz had a high chance of beating the Lakers (although if they had made a conscious, concerted effort to develop one or both of the bigs and enforce Boozer playing defense, things might have been different). To me, a reasonable expectation for this team was reaching the WCF, which might have meant that it was necessary to get better than the 4th seed. Utah did neither. Exceeding expectations would have been reaching the finals; what they did accomplish was underperforming.
See, this is why I have difficulty accepting what you're pushing here. Not because I think your expectations are unreasonable (they're not), but because you're having issues putting everything into the context of what Utah was facing this season. Let's not forget the Jazz were eighth last season. Sure, there were circumstances that established that finish - but the same could be said for this season. For starters, not many predicted Utah to finish above where they actually finished. So just because you feel the ceiling was higher than fifth does not make it so. In fact, I'd wager a great deal of fans and media members (not suggesting their opinion is more acceptable than yours, but to prove a point...) felt the Jazz would do
worse than they did. Not necessarily because of the talent problems, but more because of the fact they looked abysmal at the end of last season and had the whole Carlos Boozer problem to deal with.
Remember, entering the season it was the consensus of most that Boozer would probably be traded by season end and that he had, unfortunately, become a cancer for the team.
If I was unable to find fundamental errors in coaching strategy (e.g., substitution patterns, player development) then I wouldn't be criticizing Coach Sloan and claiming that they failed to reach their potential. Problem is that I have been a fan for decades and have seen these errors repeated time after time. To Sloan's credit, the team seems to have good chemistry now (even though Boozer is still a headcase and an ineffective co-captain, it appears that everybody got along).
Bud, you're going to find problems with every coach. You know why? Because there is no universal way how to coach a successful game. They aren't perfect and they will make mistakes. That's why you don't judge a coach based solely on one or two issues and rather look at the picture as a whole.
You know what's funny, though? I've read a lot of team message boards and outside of a team or two, most fans like to bitch about the substitution patterns of their head coach. It's like complaining about the offensive/defensive coordinator in football. The weakness is always within the substitutions.
Hell, I remember reading a whole damn post on a Spurs blog complaining about Pop's substitutions either at the end of the season or after one of their last playoff losses.
My point? No coach is perfect. Even the next guy you bring in isn't going to be perfect. He may make better substitutions than Sloan. He might even develop younger talent better than Sloan. He could also lose the team and struggle developing the right in-game adjustments to succeed.
So your criticism might be valid alienated from the overall picture. However, in the context of what Sloan has done here, I do not see how it validates the argument we need a new coach. It just suggests he isn't the perfect coach. Well hell, I knew that.
That's all I was claiming. Utah had the ability to wine one or more games--and one or more playoff series--than they did. The difference is plenty small, and there were several regular-season games this season that I believe were winnable with better coaching strategy.
Again, context is important here. In the entire context of the season, Utah had a bad start. Yet from January to the end of the season, I believe the Jazz were playing some of the best basketball in the NBA.
What changed? Did Sloan just wake up on January 1st and remember how to coach again? Of course not. They did struggle in November and December, but down the stretch played some fantastic ball and had they played that well earlier in the season, they would have most certainly grabbed the third seed and potentially the second.
Of course, had they continued playing the way they did at the end of '09 throughout the second half of the season, they certainly aren't a win away from that third spot and maybe, unfortunately, on the outside looking in when it comes to the NBA playoffs.
Again, what changed? I don't think it was Sloan's coaching.
With that said, every team has a few games they lose that maybe they should have won. The Jazz also have a few games they should have lost that they actually won (I'm thinking the Cleveland game and probably the Portland game when they were down 25 on the road). Are we going to blame Sloan for the bad losses while ignoring the big wins?
Like I said a few posts ago, I could easily say Sloan's coaching was the reason Utah even had a chance to grab that third spot. And you know what? Based on the fact this team faced huge chemistry issues and were an afterthought in the west's race prior to the season, I'd have a legitimate claim.
But in the end, Utah was a win away from that three-seed. The season did come down to one game. Was it Sloan's fault Boozer was injured and didn't play? We know the answer to the first question (no, it wasn't Sloan's fault) and of course, the second answer is an unknown. But that bolsters my point. If we're going to emphasize one or two games that proved to be the difference between the 5th and 3rd seed, we can't overlook a game where we were missing our starting PF and coming off a game played the night before.
Maybe the Jazz still lose if Boozer plays. Maybe they don't. What I do know is that we have no definitive answer there and I can't fault Sloan for that. In my mind, that changes the dynamics of this debate. I mean, you concede one or two games cost the Jazz that third seed. Well it isn't impossible to admit that one of those two games was that Phoenix game and the outcome potentially changes with Boozer in the lineup - thus delivering that third seed for Utah. Since we're talking in unknowns, it's just as easy to assume missing Boozer was the difference between the path Phoenix faced and what Utah eventually saw in the playoffs - not Sloan.
think that you're extrapolating from my argument because I never claimed that this team had the most talent. But they underperformed. And the adjustments aren't hard; you simply play less of two undersized PFs together and a slow Euro + a defenseless Boozer. You also bench players for a posession or two who are underperforming (for whatever reason) and give more minutes to those who are doing well, no matter their rank on the totem pole. Go back and watch the final game of the Suns series; Gentry stuck with the backups until late in the 4Q, and they almost won the game for him. Unfortunately he succumbed to the Sloan like tendency of relying on the veterans, and it didn't work, but Sloan probably would've pulled the backups long before the 3 to 5 minute mark because that's what he did in almost every game--if not every game--of the Laker series. Such a strategy resulted in a big-fat goose egg. Key word? Strategy. Changeable. Adaptable. To sloan's credit, he played Fesenko more in the final game, but Fes needed PT during the regular season--even when he was being a goof-off off the court. So even though Fes was a net positive out there, he wasn't bordering on being a consistent player on both ends of the court. Who decided the playing time? Our perennial underachiever, Jerry Sloan.
Again, your argument is based solely on opinion and not fact. This is the problem I am running into here with you because it's difficult to debate someone who feels their opinion is essentially the right one.
Now I know you're thinking this is an opinion-driven debate and you're somewhat right. Coaching ability can be subjective. But we also have facts and facts aren't subjective. Of course, you can spin those facts to back your claim, but the facts don't change.
That is where I believe you're wrong. And I don't mean your opinion is wrong (it's unknown because expectations and the like are purely subjective), I just mean the way you're going about this argument is wrong because you aren't presenting facts. The facts say Sloan is a successful coach. That's definitive. I guess we could debate how successful and whether someone would do a better job. However, the proven (any suggestion someone else could do a better job is entirely unproven) says to me Jerry Sloan knows how to coach and is and has always been the guy for the Jazz.
I mean, you claim Sloan is a perennial underachiever. I say he's done about all he was expected to do with the Jazz. This season I felt we'd finish fifth or sixth in the west. I had hopes the team would be better than they eventually finished, but reality told me that we still had too many issues - specifically, which you admit, dealing with the potential emotional land mine known as Carlos Boozer.
I also feel the Jazz overachieved in the playoffs by even advancing beyond the first round sans two starters. Maybe you felt they'd beat the Nuggets (especially after falling down 0-1). I didn't.
But that's pesky opinion and, again, not fact.
To be clear, though, I believe fact can be used to determine if a coach is
not successful. I feel if a coach does not consistently get his teams to the playoffs and produces losing season after losing season, you have a legitimate case to call for a coaching change. But that isn't the case here. We're not in that position.
We're also not in the position, like Cleveland, where a successful head coach is being forced out to appease the star player (in that case, LeBron). Is Mike Brown a bad coach? Well you could make the argument based on the fact his teams typically fail to live up to their playoff seeding (how many times did Sloan's teams squander the one-seed out west? Never). But that wasn't why he was fired. He was fired because LeBron wanted him gone and if the Cavs have any hope of him returning, they'll do anything he asks.
I guess if Williams was on the record as to saying he wanted a coaching change, I would probably join your chorus.
That isn't the case, though, is it?
Not sure why you and other apologist fans are simply satisfying with making a dent in the playoffs instead of maximizing this team's potential, which they definitely didn't. Whether the ceiling of this team was a 6-game exit in the WCF or a title is more debatable IMHO than whether they failed to meet their reasonable potential.
Again, you fail at differentiating opinion and fact. Just because you hold an opinion does not make you absolutely right. I'm sorry, man, but that's just not how it works. If you think they're not maximizing the team's potential, fine. But don't act as if it's unequivocally accepted.
Well, I already pointed out that both Popp and PJ (and Sloan, for thtat matter, started as assistants, so it is very narrow-minded to not use the assistant route as a viable source of new coaches. And again, my contention is that Sloan failed to properly exercise more than one fundamental coaching technique, especially when it comes to substitution choices and player development, which should be enough in my book to not renew his contract if he shows no indication of changing (he's shown little over 20 years).
Almost every NBA coach starts as an assistant. The great. The good. The bad. And yes, the ugly. They all generally were assistants at one time in their career. This does nothing to help your point because for every Phil Jackson, there are fifty Bob Weiss'.
ROFLMAO that you would argue that a coach would clash with the players when Sloan is probably among the absolute worst in the league in maintaining good relationships with all of his players. To his credit, relationships seem good now, but Sloan is remarried and older, so it's no surprise that he's mellowed out. Also, Deron's leadership has helped to start building cohesion on the player level, and that player-level leadership was absent between the Malone/Stock era and the Deron era.
All his players or just the bad ones? How many times did Sloan clash with Malone or Stockton or Horny for that matter? Williams, our star player, is fully supportive of Sloan. You even admit his relationships seem good now.
Sure, there will be clashing. Sure, coaches and players will have spats (guess what, so will players and players), but in the end, how many major players on the Jazz have left because of a ruined relationship with Sloan? Chris Morris? Ha.
No one is expecting the perfect hire. No coach is perfect. I'm asking for a coach that exercises fundamental coaching techniques, including player evaluation and matchup evaluation.
Listening to you, it's a wonder Sloan could win 10 games in a season, let alone 54. I mean, you think he lacks a clear understanding of substitution patterns. Can't develop players. Has no coaching technique and utterly fails at matchup evaluation. And yet, through all this incompetency, he still managed to win over 1,000 games, become the fourth winningest coach in NBA history and lead the Jazz, once again, to 50+ wins this season and the second round.
For a bumbling idiot, that's pretty damn good. Well frankly, maybe you're right. Obviously if an inept coach like Sloan could have the Jazz on the cusp of the third seed, a retarded, half-aborted fetus assistant could probably have them undefeated well into the month of March!
Well, if my expectations are that the Jazz's coach have the same caliber as the coaches who have actually won a championship, then call me optimistic. And if my claim is that when a coach fails to meet these expectations, his contract shouldn't be renewed, call me demanding. What is a true tenet is that if you keep doing the same thing, chances are that you will keep having the same results. Which is what happened this year. Utah had decent discipline, OK teamwork, a pick-and-roll system that worked against most teams. But defense wins championships, and Sloan didn't put this team in a position to win the defensive battle. The Jazz wings probably maxed out what they could do vs. Kobe, but the 4/5 spots did not against their respective opposition. What weakens your argument is that I have identified specific weaknesses in Sloan's coaching rather than simply saying that Sloan sucks. Not sure why you are so interested in riding Sloan's jock when they got pwned in the second round.
I don't think you're optimistic. I think you're irrational.
You want a coach that is cut from the same cloth as those who have won a championship. That's a realistic goal, I guess, considering that since 1990, only five NBA coaches have won titles (Rivers, Jackson, Tomjanovich, Popovich and Riley).
There have been over 100 coaching changes since 1990 in the NBA. That means, out of all those changes, only five coaches have what you want.
Do you know the odds of grabbing that sixth coach?
I'm sure you can do the math.
See, that goes beyond optimistic. That's in the realm of unbelievability. Not because it can't happen, but because it probably won't happen.
So I guess Utah's future, in your eyes, is to join the ever turning coaching carousel where we only give a coach three years to deliver before shipping him out. Maybe that's what you want. I don't. I don't see how there is any stability in that. And for a franchise located in Utah - arguably the least attractive place to play in the NBA - I think the last thing we want to do is gun for instability.
But whatever.
What part of inept substitution patterns, subpar player development, and inadequate matchup evaluation do you not understand?
Since you understand it so well, why not go walk into Gregg Miller's office and offer up your services?
