Jerry Sloan - Coaching Career

Coaching Career

While at Evansville, coach McCutchan suggested that Sloan coach at his alma mater. After retiring in 1976, Sloan took the Evansville job but withdrew after five days. That same season the Evansville basketball team as well as coaches were killed in a plane crash at Evansville Airport.

After two years, Sloan was hired by the Bulls as a scout. After one season in this role, he became an assistant coach with the team. In 1979 Sloan became the Bulls' head coach. He was head coach for less than three seasons, winning 94 games and losing 121. He led the team to the playoffs in his second year, but was fired after a poor start during the next campaign.

After departing Chicago, Sloan became a scout for the Utah Jazz for one season. He then became coach of the Evansville Thunder of the Continental Basketball Association for the 1984 season before returning as Assistant Coach with the Jazz. After Frank Layden became team president in December 1988, the Jazz chose Sloan as the new head coach. Sloan enjoyed a highly successful run of sixteen consecutive seasons of taking his team to the playoffs, and he has coached such players as Hall of Famers Karl Malone and John Stockton, Jeff Hornacek, Antoine Carr, Tom Chambers, Mark Eaton, and Jeff Malone during the process.

Sloan led the Jazz to six division championships and 10 seasons with greater than 50 wins. He also took the Jazz to the NBA Finals twice, losing in the 1997 and 1998 championships, both times to his old team, the Michael Jordan-led Bulls. By the end of this period, he had joined Pat Riley and Phil Jackson as the only coaches with 10 or more seasons winning 50 or more games. After the retirement of long-time Jazz anchors John Stockton and Karl Malone, Sloan coached a younger group of budding stars, including Carlos Boozer, Andrei Kirilenko and later, Deron Williams.

In the spring of 2004, Sloan and his team were involved in a battle for the eighth spot in the Western Conference, which would have given Sloan his seventeenth straight trip to the playoffs. The Jazz were tied with the Denver Nuggets for the eighth and last spot of the playoffs with three games to go in the regular season. The Jazz lost the final two games, causing Sloan to miss the playoffs for the first time in eighteen seasons as Jazz coach. After leading a young, dismantled team to an unexpected 42–40 record, he finished just behind Hubie Brown of the Memphis Grizzlies in voting for the 2004 NBA Coach of the Year Award.

Sloan collected his 1,000th career win against the Dallas Mavericks on December 11, 2006, in a 101–79 victory, which made him only the fifth coach in NBA history to reach the milestone. After disappointing seasons in 2004–05 and 2005–06, the strong play of the Jazz in the 2006–07 season had renewed speculation from some sportswriters that Sloan would be a strong candidate for Coach of the Year in 2007. But Sloan lost the award to Toronto Raptors head coach Sam Mitchell, who led his team to a franchise-record-tying 47 victories and their first Atlantic Division title. Sloan lost by 93 points, 394–301.

The Jazz advanced to the Western Conference finals on May 15, 2007 with a 100–87 win over the Golden State Warriors. It was the sixth time in franchise history that Utah advanced to the conference finals, all coming under Sloan.

During the 2008–09 season, Sloan reached 1,000 wins as coach of the Jazz on November 7 after beating the Oklahoma City Thunder 104–97 in a Friday night game. He is the only coach in NBA history with 1,000 wins for one team. Sloan returned as head coach of the Jazz for the 2009–10 season, leading the team to a 53–29 record and the playoffs.

Mirroring his tenacity as a player, Sloan was just as fiery as a coach. He was suspended one game for pushing referee Bob Delaney in April 1993. After a decade, Sloan was served a seven-game suspension in 2003 for pushing referee Courtney Kirkland in Sacramento.

In April 2009 Sloan was named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, in the same class as his former longtime point guard John Stockton. Sloan chose Class of 2006 Hall of Famer Charles Barkley to introduce him during his induction ceremony.