Sloan Yet to Sneak Peek at Jersey

Jerry Sloan hasn’t yet sneaked a peek at the jersey hanging from the ceiling of the United Center--his retired jersey, the one that pays tribute to the 10 years he spent helping to create the Chicago Bulls. You wouldn’t want to call them “glamorous” years because the Bulls never won a title during Sloan’s run, never even got to the NBA Finals. And “glamorous” is the very last word you’d use to describe Sloan. They were honorable years, though. Seasons defined by hard-nosed defensive play, clever execution of a bare-bones offensive, and a toughness of mind and body you rarely see in the NBA anymore.

Only a few years ago, Sloan’s jersey was the only thing worth hanging from the rafters of old Chicago Stadium. There were no championship banners to fly, monuments hadn’t yet been built to Michael Jordan. Sloan was challenged to look up at his jersey before his Utah Jazz began practice, but he wouldn’t.

Jerry Sloan isn’t long on sentiment. And it wouldn’t be the most manly thing to do, stare up at your own Bulls jersey while you’re trying to figure out how to beat your old team in the NBA Finals. “Naaaaaw,” Sloan said. “The only thing I pay any attention to is a ring I still wear that the (Bulls) gave me when I retired.”

People in Chicago want to make a big deal out of Sloan coaching in the NBA Finals here. Sloan hates being fussed over. But this is one of the very, very few fights Sloan isn’t going to win. He played in the franchise’s first game, 1966, became an assistant coach when bad knees forced him to retire in 1976, and was head coach of the Bulls briefly, probably before he was ready.

More than anybody else he personified Dick Motta’s modestly talented, blood-and-guts Bulls teams that came up short every single time in the playoffs to Wilt’s Lakers or Kareem’s Bucks. Sloan has been retired as a player for 20 years, yet among folk over 35 he is still the second most popular basketball figure in this city, after Jordan. Yes, ahead of Scottie Pippen.

The only thing that’s changed about Sloan over the years is that to be a successful head coach he had to modify his combative nature. Otherwise, he’s about the simplest, most uncluttered, unpretentious man in the world. Asked Tuesday what improvements he’d like to see his Utah team make for Game 2, Sloan said, “I’d like to play a little better.”

When a reporter started asking a detailed question about freeing Karl Malone for more shots, Sloan said, “Now, you’re getting too complicated.”

NBC analyst Matt Goukas played with and against Sloan. And even as a teammate, Goukas said, “Jerry never seemed all that analytical about the game. He didn’t like all the frills. He didn’t want to know a lot about ‘all that other stuff.’ He just came full steam ahead. He wanted to just ‘go play.’ ”

Goukas, after delivering a scouting report on Sloan -- from his huge hands and ability to rebound to the way he could play the angles and use his body to compensate for a lack of speed -- added that Sloan was the first player he could recall who made a habit of stepping in front of onrushing players to take charging fouls.

“Matt said that?” Sloan said later. “Matt’s my age which means he’s too old to remember too much of anything. I didn’t study it. That’s just what I was told to do. My college coach taught us, don’t back down. That you have as much right to the floor as anybody else. If you back down, they won’t respect you.”

And so Sloan never backed down in 10 years. Neither did his backcourt mate Norm Van Lier, who now does Bulls games for “SportsChannel” in Chicago. No backcourt was ever tougher, and few if any backcourts were as good defensively. In Chicago, you hardly ever hear one name mentioned without the other and they played like a tag-team, too.

If Jerry West or Walt Frazier hit three jumpers in a row, he was getting knocked down the next trip up the floor. “We didn’t take any cheap, stupid fouls, 30 feet away from the play,” Van Lier said Tuesday. “We saved fouls for putting people on their butts, and we’d tell the referee, the opposing player and everybody in the building. Then we’d help the guy up.”

Before Van Lier was traded to Chicago -- when he was with Cincinnati -- he and Sloan got into a brawl. “In a preseason game, no less. ... I think it was up at Northern Illinois University,” Van Lier said. “We fought all the way out of the gym, right through the doors. But we shook hands afterward. Jerry’s a special human being. I got goosebumps the other day, for him. Of course, I want the Bulls to win, but with Jerry sitting over there. ... It’s a tough call.”

Of Van Lier, Sloan said, “We had a bond we developed over all those years. He babysat my kids. ... Saved me a lot of money.”

Reserve center/forward Greg Foster, when he first joined the Jazz, was somewhat surprised to hear Sloan insist that players had to tuck in their jerseys and the drawstrings to their shorts at all times.

“He’s the most down-to-earth person you could want to meet,” Foster said. “But at the same time I’m thinking, ‘Oh oh, this guy’s a little different. He’s pretty strict.’ ”

Like a lot of players who aren’t overly gifted physically, Sloan had to pay attention to details the flyboys didn’t have to bother with. He’s got the same situation now as a coach. “We don’t have a lot of great athletes,” he said. “Unless we execute, it’s not going to work. We shoot as many layups as anybody, based on execution. But great athletes can get open against us, which they’ve always done. We can’t have five guys not doing exactly the same thing. It won’t work.”

Somebody mentioned that he had just described his own Bulls teams in the early- and mid-1970s that were always good enough to contend, but never good enough to break through to the NBA Finals. “I’m coaching almost the same team I played for,” Sloan said, stunning almost all of us listening.

“The way Jerry and his Utah team kept knocking, knocking, knocking for so long reminded me of us,” Van Lier said. Bob Love, Chet Walker, Sloan, Van Lier, Tom Boerwinkle (and later Nate Thurmond), Goukas, Rick Adelman, Clem Haskins, Bob Weiss, etc., had little margin for error, too. But they screened, back-doored and defended their way to Game 7 of the Western Conference final in 1975 before losing to Rick Barry’s Warriors.

It’s been 31 years of persevering in the NBA now, trying to get past Wilt then and Michael Jordan now. It’s the same mission, only his allegiance has changed, which may help account for why Jerry Sloan is too busy looking straight ahead to look up.