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Insight into the Jerry Sloan fiasco

From what I recall, Sloan weathered something similar when Mark Jackson was here. Young men will always try to get away with stuff; I don't see where Williams was especially bad there. No doubt Sloan was just getting tired of the whole thing.

I do agree the motivation to get something for Williams now was probably very strong.
 
You know what's funny?

Boozer doesn't play the final minutes of every single (close) Bulls game. He's too much of a liability on the defensive end. Anyone else see the final minutes of the game on Sunday? LOL. At least he was on the bench instead of sitting behind it in a suit.
 
Utah Jazz fan fiction... what the ****. Why didn't I think of this before?

"Defense! Defense!" cried old man Sloan. "Cover the ****ing ball! God damn it." His eyes flashed savagely. He kicked the air in frustration. "Get it through your thick ******** heads!"

At the Utah Jazz Practice Facility, the play had come to a stand-still. The players looked at each other. They looked at their coaches. The younger guys -- the weaker guys -- Hayward and Evans -- had fear in their eyes.

Al Jefferson sighed and leaned against a white wall, feeling the cold of the brick on his back. Sweat poured down his face, and he bunched up his jersey and wiped it away. He knew what was coming: Deron was itching for a fight. He could sense his point guard's mood. Lately it had been dangerous -- venomous. Deron had been slamming doors this morning. Scowling in the locker room. Glowering in the weight room. Al didn't know why. There was a black vacuum of anger in the center of his friend that Al didn't understand. Didn't want to.

Deron Williams tucked the ball under one arm with a smirk and took a few steps toward Sloan. "Don't be too hard on them, coach. Nobody in the league can guard me one on one."

Al watched as the old coach, the legend and warrior, stiffened, his shoulders canting almost imperceptibly into a fighting stance. His mood, lately, hadn't been much better than Deron's.

"That's why we rely on team defense. This look like ****ing one on one to you?" He gestured toward the other nine players, and, vaguely, to the four others who presently hovered nearby. "I guess it must, way you've been playing lately."

Deron took a few dribbles, looked at the floor, and seemed to be considering his response. Al might have said, "You're right, coach -- I've got to pass more." Or, "How can I improve?" It was too much to hope for. Deron put the ball back on his hip, looked the old man in the eye, and said, "**** you, coach." And gave a little half-smile.

Before the words were out, Sloan was charging forward with a fist raised. His face went white around the edges and red at the center. "I'll ****ing show you," he raged. But he had scarcely taken a single step before two of his assistants had his arms pinned in a duplex wrap-up.

Al was too far away to make out what they murmured to him; and it didn't matter. He crouched and flexed his knees, locking his hands together in front of him. This was not what he had signed on for.

One of the coaches -- the Layden boy -- was blowing his whistle and telling the players that practice was over.

Again, Al mopped sweat off his face as he began to walk slowly toward the showers. The coaches fell into a far corner to confer and try to calm the raging of the old man. A few factions of guys formed up as some of the players remained behind to work on their shots and rebound for each other and talk about their families.

Normally Al might have been one of them. But not today. Today he didn't have the energy. All he wanted to do was go home and get into the hot tub with a damned crate of Budweiser.

One of the guys fell into place beside him and said, "He wasn't always like this."

That was Ronnie. The peacemaker. Al wasn't sure if he meant Deron or old man Sloan. He grunted noncommittally.

"I mean it," said Ronnie.

...etc.
 
The Thriller said:
You know what's funny?

Boozer doesn't play the final minutes of every single (close) Bulls game. He's too much of a liability on the defensive end. Anyone else see the final minutes of the game on Sunday? LOL. At least he was on the bench instead of sitting behind it in a suit.
Click to expand...

Coach made an offense/defense substitution for the final 14 seconds of the game and you spin it into something completely different. And that doesn't even mean Boozer is a bad defender, if just means Taj is a better one.
 
RCdazy said:
Take this story for what you will because ironically enough, it happened at Best Buy, but really isn't that so fitting?

A friend of mine works for the Geek Squad in the Sandy/Draper Best Buy. He went in for a normal day of work, fixing peoples virus riddled computers. Anyway, he turns on a laptop to see some awkwardly stretched and pixelated image of Jerry Sloan as the desktop background. "What kind of fan keeps a giant picture of Sloan as their background?" was his first thought, but being used to seeing all sorts of bizarre things on people's home computers (lots of porn) he went about his work. He finished repairing the issue with the computer, set it aside, and didn't think much else about it. Later that day, in walks a middle-aged blond woman. She gives him her information and instantly the laptop makes sense. It's Tammy Sloan. Being the forward person that he is, he makes small chat for a moment while explaining to her what they had to do to repair her computer, and then asks if it's okay if he talks about the Jazz with her because he is a big fan. She responds with "of course" so he proceeds to ask her why Jerry actually quit. Her answer came without hesitation "two words: Deron Williams." He was under the impression that since soon after Jerry had left D-will was traded, that maybe the media had blown the whole situation between the two out of proportion. He prodded a little more and she said that Jerry met after the game to tell the management that D-Will's behavior had gotten so out of hand that he felt they needed to step in. Management somewhat assumed that his frustration was heat of the moment, and tried to diffuse the situation. He resolved then that he had had enough, and that the team issues could be someone else's problem. She also said that the tension between the two had been building up for a long time and that Deron had a history of doing strange things like faking injuries to get out of practices and trying to undermine Jerry.

He wasn't sure why she was so candid about the whole thing. Maybe it's because if anyone tried to relay the story it would probably sound made up anyway. Take it for what you will, considering the whole point of view came from one side, and it's not like Jerry is an angel. I, for one, found it interesting though. Flame away.
Click to expand...

Sloan sounds like a baby! Mom Deron is being mean! Grow the **** up Sloan!
 
I buy it. It fits the events. But doesn't say anything we didn't already know. I miss Jerry.
 
If Deron was really faking it to cruise through or miss practices, then I am glad he's gone. He just doesnt have the maturity and smarts of a Stockton. It is not like as if Stockton and Malone did not have their disagreements with Sloan, but how they went about resolving it says a lot about who they were as players. If Deron was dumb enough to think that it was the system that was the problem and not the fact that we didnt have wings worth a darn or that his own play was mediocre because of a nagging wrist issue, then he is'nt even as smart as I thought he was. He needs to pull a Lebron and go to a team where there are already established go-to players because he does'nt quite have it in him to lead a team to the title. Atleast, as of now.
 
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