And Sloan had two Hall of Famers/top 50 players to hitch a ride to who helped him hide his in-game ineptitude for nearly 20 years. He was a good motivator and probably a good teacher, but a poor game manager and not a particularly good player developer; Stock, Malone, and more recently Millsap were primarily products of their own motivation. By contrast, see Gregg Popovich. Just sayin'.
Cue the violins; blame it on the refs. Who's asking "Jeffy" to be a Hall of Famer? Just asking for enough aggressiveness to draw some fouls and enough defense not to be a liability.
Oh, and just asking for a coach to identify the best rotation on a given night and then play them. Yesterday, the best rotation wasn't playing Kanter, Favors, and Carroll together in the second quarter (and it often isn't). And it wasn't to play almost exclusively Millsap and Jefferson at the 4-5 spots during extended time, especially when Favors and Kanter had shown the ability to play well in the clutch.
Best strategy was (and usually is) to pair Jefferson or Millsap with one of the young bigs for large portions of the game. In Q1 the young bigs didn't come in until 2 minutes left; in Q3, until 1 minute left. And Teague sat down with 3 minutes left, leaving the opportunity for Tinsley to run with Hinrich.
Just sayin'.