Leave Sloan Alone
‘The Coach’ (Doug Benc - NBAE/Getty Images)
I’m wincing as I write this, because I can only imagine the response. Here goes. Why does everyone dog pile on Jerry Sloan when the Jazz lose? I’ll answer my own question here: it’s human nature. Coach Sloan is in a no-win situation. It’s the nature of his job. I read a comment from someone’s post a few days ago, which suggested that the reason the Jazz lost was all Sloan’s fault. This commenter stated some statistics about minutes played, etc. he/she had observed from close watching of the game. I did a little checking, and it turns out the commenter must have been stating “facts” from a video game or some other visual media. His/her facts just didn’t match-up with the actual ones. I’m sure our friend and frequent commenter here on Jazzbots, Linda McFarland will agree with me on the opinion that the Coach-any-coach, for that matter is in a lose-lose situation. When we’re winning, he’s great, he deserves Coach of the year, he’s been cheated every year, his system works, etc.etc. When we’re losing, it’s fire Sloan, he just sits there and lets everything go down the drain.
I think it’s the nature of every sports fan in every spot on the globe to blame the coach, no matter what. It’s a thankless job most of the time.
Everyone should have to be the coach of some sort of team at least once in their lifetime-if they want to have the right to criticize a coach. I’m not saying the coach is perfect, far from it. But when you draw up a play and everyone on the team runs it except that one kid who was told by their parent to shoot the ball every time it hits their hands (even though they’ve gone 0-15 on the game), and you lose your chance at advancing to the state finals by one point, I’d say the blame lies on more folks than just the coach. (If you think that last run-on sentence seemed kind of bitter, you should of known me when it happened). Once, when I was the coach, our best forward was out with an injury. I had never met her parents, they had never come to a game, never talked with me or any of the coaching staff, never come to a practice in two years. The only info I was getting about this injured girl was from the girl herself. She said her doctor told her she wasn’t ready for any overhead activity. Kind of hard to shoot or rebound with that limitation!
Anyway, after our game that night her Mother came up to me and verbally tore me to shreds because I wasn’t playing her daughter. Of course after she calmed down and retracted her claws, we discussed the lack of communication between the three of us. I was overjoyed to learn that her daughter could indeed play, I was sad that the only way the girl’s parent came to one of her games was to yell at the coach. And, I’m sad that I was the one who got yelled at.
If you’ve never been the one being yelled at, think before you do the yelling. I think Coach Sloan has done fairly well in the situation that he’s in. Does he make mistakes? Yes!!! Plenty of them. Does his team make mistakes, quit playing hard sometimes, do stupid things, make dumb choices? Yes, a thousand times, yes. I’m willing to bet that Coach Sloan shows up prepared, and willing to do his best, and put out his best effort for every game, practice, and meeting. Could we say the same about everyone else on the team? Don’t bet on it.
9 Comments to “Leave Sloan Alone”
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I agree. It’s funny how a player can make 75% of his shots in a losing effort and be considered to have played a great game. But if a coach makes 90% of his substitutions correctly, people decide that the team lost because the coach should have known that player X would go cold or pick up a ticky tack foul. Coach Sloan has done a phenomenal job year in and year out getting the most out of his talent. I say the man deserves a little deference.
Coach Sloan is great. He has altered the game whenever he needed and no other coach can say that. Sure other coaches have won titles but Sloan has shown that he can have a team and make them great with out major superstars (although we they are now superstars in my book). Phil Jackson had Jordan and Shaq and now we see a little bit of Jackson and his coaching. Look at Pat Riley now there is a guy who needs to go.
Jazz are great! I think they are still working out a few kinks and losing Fisher was a shock because he was also a good team leader.
Go COACH SLOAN GO JAZZ AND GO JAZZ DANCERS!!!
Utah is fortunate to have such a solid coaching staff that actually cares about the success of the team instead of individual egos and personal gain as you see around many of the cities that we play.
Why are people saying that the Utah Jazz need to switch the head coach?
Jerry Sloan’s great. If it weren’t for him we wouldn’t have made it that far last
year. Yes, the Jazz are off a little bit this year. But it’s only half way through
the season. There are 40 more games left. The Jazz have a less chance
making it to top 2 in the Western conference. But I’m sure that they will
make the playoff this year. If they can continue at what they did at the Clippers.
And bringing in a win. Then I’m sure they will make the playoffs.
I still say; Sloan needs to retire. We need some new blood and a new vision/coaching style in Utah. No matter what players we get, it doesn’t work.
Charles Barkley said it best last year in Houston when he said that Jerry Sloan has been running the same plays since the eighties. Yea, they still work “most of the time”, but I’m tired of seeing the Jazz only win “most of the time” ( 50-60%)!!
Tired of seeing them win “most of the time”? I’d like to see the team that wins “all ther time”. That’s a lot like saying the person in the Olympics that takes only a silver is a failure.
I agree that the coach is usually the one blamed. If anyone is interested I’d like to share another story from when my husband coached girls basketball. After a game ( can’t remember if it was a w or L) a player’s father came up in the gym in front of everyone and raked him over the coals but good because his daughter was only in a few minutes. It was embarrasing to every one. Thank heavens my husband was able to keep his mouth shut and walk off. About a week later we received a long apologetic letter from the father (even apologized for his language in front of me). He said that night his daughter had a long talk with him and told him to leave the coach alone because the father had no idea what went on in between games and at practice. She told him she had a good idea why she didn’t see many minutes that night and until he was there all the time he had no right to complain about who played and who didn’t and no right to make a scene about it. I think from that night there were a lot of us who learned a really good lesson from a young lady. Maybe not important to many of you but it should make you think a little. GO JAZZ-GO COACHES-GO DANCERS-GO TRUE FANS!!
Most of the time?! Well you can’t be perfecto all of the time.
@ Linda,
I have a great deal of respect for the girl in your story. From experience, usually the kid who doesn’t try hard in practice, doesn’t follow team rules, etc, is typically the one that goes home and complains about how everyone else is at fault and how no matter how hard they try, they are the only one being picked on. Bravo to her!
Leave sloan alone!!!!!!!
I would like to take him out in the middle of a desert and leave him alone, or the ocean, or the mountains etc., etc.
Linda, I don’t fully understand what your husbands story has to do with sloan, but I think he should apply for sloans job. sloan never can keep his mouth shut.. He is still embarrising to see on tv or anywhere else..
He gets them close but guess what NO CIGAR!!!!!!!
Let’s give some one else a chance, if there is a player he doesn’t agree with he gets rid of him. The team and fans should have the same opportunity to get rid of sloan.
eemonson@yahoo.com
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