He Has a Farm Grip on the Jazz

Portland’s Mike Dunleavy was named the NBA coach of the year Friday.

Dunleavy is not the best coach in the Western Conference. He’s not even the best coach in his current series.

That distinction belongs to Jerry Sloan of Utah, although he’ll never get the hardware to prove it.

Even though Pat Riley is the only active coach with a higher winning percentage than Sloan, you never hear them mentioned in the same sentence. Maybe if Sloan pulled more stunts like dunking his head into a bucket of water or quoting from “The Art of War” he would get more notice.

While Riley spends his off-season making corporate motivational speeches for five-figure paydays, Sloan is back in McLeansboro, Ill., growing crops on his 1,000-acre farm.

“Wheat, soybeans and corn,” Sloan said. “No marijuana.”

That’s some Jerry Sloan humor for you. He can actually be funny at times. Unfortunately for him, he took the reins of the Jazz from Frank Layden, who could turn a postgame interview session into amateur night at the Improv. Layden’s comedy routine made him one of the best-known coaches in the league, even though he never took the Jazz to the conference finals.

In 11 years under Sloan, the Jazz has been to the Western Conference finals five times and the NBA finals the last two years. The only coaches in NBA history who can top his winning percentage of .632 are Phil Jackson, Riley, Billy Cunningham, K.C. Jones and Red Auerbach.

You can say he has been blessed with two all-time greats in Karl Malone and John Stockton. You also should mention that their supporting cast has been weaker than those of any of the top teams coached by the other guys. Every Jordan-and-Pippen, Magic-and-Kareem, Doctor-and-Moses, Bird-and-McHale duo has been augmented by players who had been or went on to be all-stars at some point in their careers. No Jazz player besides Malone and Stockton has played in the All-Star game in the ‘90s.

I’d like to see what some other coaches would do if they had to decide between Greg Ostertag and Todd Fuller when it came time to choose a center for the final minutes of a playoff game.

Utah has a reputation for being the smartest team in the league. Doesn’t basketball intelligence start with the coach?

Those plays that Utah runs, which so often seem to come at the right time and get the ball in the right place? Sloan calls them, every one of them, from the sidelines.

Sloan will say the Jazz offense isn’t anything special, that the system was in place before he got there, and he’ll simplify his role by saying, “Somebody has to be in charge.”

He describes himself as “just a dumb farmer.”

Not quite.

The play-through-pain mentality that pervades the team, to the point that players tease each other for complaining about injuries, comes from Sloan.

That willingness to use whatever edge is necessary on the court comes from Sloan.

“There’s a toughness about Jerry that’s contagious,” Utah forward Thurl Bailey said.

If Stockton and Jeff Hornacek mix things up and use their elbows a little too often for their opponents’ liking, it’s because they’re doing things the way their coach did when he played for the Chicago Bulls in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“We had a lot of problems because our guards set a lot of screens,” Sloan said. “Every other night, some guy would get offended because we set screens on them. Sometimes we had to fight our way out of it.”

I like Sloan’s tactical approach too. He rarely keeps guys in or out of the game longer than they should be. He’s willing to break from patterns and make changes in the playoffs, such as the small lineup he used to counter Sacramento in the first round.

If there’s one Sloan trait I don’t like, it’s the way he perpetuates the “everyone is against the Jazz” mentality that abounds in Salt Lake City.

This week the town was crying about the $10,000 fine levied on Malone for elbowing Portland forward Brian Grant in Game 1. People complained about a double standard because Chris Webber wasn’t punished after he leveled Stockton with a hard screen in Game 2 of the first round. “Maybe John Stockton should have stayed on the floor for 10-15 seconds,” Sloan said, in a bit of mockery of the length of time it took Grant to get up.

Sloan also snipped: “Maybe they think Karl has already used up his value to the league.”

But you can’t place too much blame on a coach for sticking up for his guys.

Now Sloan has to get back to the main part of his job: getting his guys to play their best. It’s what keeps him going.

“There’s nothing more fun than watching your team play hard,” Sloan said. “I can watch basketball all day, but the only time I get excited is when we play hard.”

Right now, it’s time for him to be worried. His Jazz lost home-court advantage when the Trail Blazers won Game 2 at the Delta Center and evened the series at 1-1. Now his aging team has to play back-to-back games today and Sunday on the road against a Portland team that has more matchup advantages and has found defensive answers for almost everything Utah likes to do. Sloan has limited personnel and not many options.

Somehow I think this will turn into his finest hour. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but if I were a gambling man I’d bet on the farmer.

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Sloan’s Record

Jerry Sloan has coached 14 NBA seasons and lost to his former team, Chicago, in his only trips to the finals the last two seasons:

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Season Team W L Finish 1979-80 Chicago 30 52 4th MW 1980-81 Chicago 45 37 2nd Cent. 1981-82 Chicago 19 32 Fired 1988-89 Utah 40 25 1st MW 1989-90 Utah 55 27 2nd MW 1990-91 Utah 54 28 2nd MW 1991-92 Utah 55 27 1st MW 1992-93 Utah 47 35 3rd MW 1993-94 Utah 53 29 3rd MW 1994-95 Utah 60 22 2nd MW 1995-96 Utah 55 27 2nd MW 1996-97 Utah 64 18 1st MW 1997-98 Utah 62 20 1st MW 1999 Utah 37 13 2nd MW

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.