Utah's Sloan approaching 1,000th win

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By DOUG ALDEN AP Sports Writer

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Jerry Sloan doesn't like it much when somebody makes a fuss about him.

He has the longest tenure of any head coach in major pro sports, the fifth-highest win total in NBA history and is on the verge of another milestone.

Sloan is about to get his 1,000th victory as an NBA coach, yet takes little credit for any of them.

"That's not why I'm coaching and that's not why I played," grumbles Sloan, who had 997 victories heading into this weekend.

Sloan says his longevity comes from a combination of luck, good players and good assistants. Others can call 1,000 a milestone. He will just think of it as another win, even though only four other coaches have reached that total.

Sloan needed 16 victories for his 1,000th entering this season, and got 12 in Utah's first 13 games. If the Jazz can put a string like that together in the playoffs, even the cantankerous Sloan will be happy. Until then, he's going to push his players the way he has through his first 18 seasons as Utah's coach.

"To me that's what it's all about -- trying to be as good as you can be every day. I know that's kind of corny, but that's all I know," Sloan said.

It's about as complex as Utah's pick-and-roll. Sloan just expects his players to work -- hard -- and his standard of what constitutes "work" probably is higher than most.

Raised on a farm in southern Illinois and the youngest of 10 children, Sloan never has lost his country mind-set.

"I think that's part of my job. Some players don't like that," Sloan said. "I think in order for them to get better, they need to be reminded that they need to work hard. They're getting paid a lot of money to be in this business."

Sloan, who had to stop wearing his John Deere cap at practice when the NBA adopted a new dress code last season, has taken his tough-love method a long way. He led the Jazz to the NBA finals in 1997 and 1998, losing both times to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

The Jazz haven't reached the finals since, but Sloan is coaching much the same as he always has.

"He's intense," forward Matt Harpring said. "Even when we win, he's saying, 'Hey guys, we can still get better. Let's get to the best we can be.' That's why he's lasted here so long -- because he gets players better."

Sloan has adjusted slightly to having a younger team than he's used to. But he hasn't softened much. Jazz owner Larry Miller said he sees a little more understanding and patience from the coach.

"There's an element of him letting them see the compassionate side of him. Now that's a word people don't use with Jerry, but I think he's always had that but stopped people from seeing that," Miller said.

As hard as he is on them, Sloan also is intensely loyal to his players. He will bellow at officials until he gets a technical -- sometimes two -- and twice has gone too far. He was suspended for a game in 1993 for bumping an official, and for seven games when he shoved a referee in 2003.

Sloan apologized and never questioned the length of the suspension.

That kind of modesty is typical of Sloan. If he ever wins NBA coach of the year, he wants to rename the award "staff of the year." Sloan makes the final decisions and has a better title, but he shares the workload with Phil Johnson, who has been on Sloan's staff since he took the job, Scott Layden and Tyrone Corbin.

"Assistant coaches are just as important as I am. Sometimes they don't have to take the blame or they don't get the credit," Sloan said. "But that's always the way I've felt."

Sloan also says he's been lucky to play basketball through college and 11 NBA seasons. He felt lucky to coach the Chicago Bulls, the team that selected him first in the 1966 expansion draft and retired his No. 4, for 2 1/2 years.

It hurt when his former team fired him, but Sloan was back in the NBA a couple of years later when the Jazz hired him as a scout, than an assistant coach.

And when Frank Layden stepped down as Utah's coach 18 years ago, Sloan took over. He knows he was lucky to inherit Layden's team, which included John Stockton and Karl Malone when their careers were really just getting started.

"We kind of grew into this thing. They were young and I was a fairly young coach," Sloan said. "They were the hardest working guys on and off the floor that I've ever been around."

Stockton retired in 2003, then Malone left for a final season with the Los Angeles Lakers. Life after the future Hall of Famers has been trying, but not as bad as it could have been. Utah went 42-40 in 2003-04 and 41-41 last season.

In between, there was a 26-56 record in 2004-05, when the Jazz struggled through injuries and Sloan endured the most difficult year of his life. His wife, Bobbye, died in June 2004 after a second battle with cancer.

The Sloans were married 41 years and had been together since high school.

Sloan, who often laments when players "feel sorry for themselves," grieved the loss with his three children that summer, then was coaching again when training camp opened.

"That's kind of the way life is. Things don't always go the way you'd like for them to be. So you do the best you can and move forward," he said. "If that isn't good enough, you try something else."

Sloan still enjoys summers at his farm in McLeansboro, Ill., where he restores and collects antique tractors.

Sloan, who remarried in September, is under contract through next season. He will be 65 in March and doesn't talk about retirement. If Miller ever thinks it's time for a new coach, Sloan said he has 135 acres of farmland to get back to.

"They can have any reason they want to fire you if they want to," Sloan said. "If they want to make a change, I've never had a problem with it. I know how this business works."