Jazz's Sloan picks a good place to roll

SALT LAKE CITY -- The league shifted toward fun-to-watch, hard-to-guard, run-and-gun teams, sprinkled -- as has long been the NBA's case -- with a couple of dominant centers.

Jerry Sloan's teams were none of those.

All along they plodded along. They picked. They popped. They rolled.

Oh, did they roll.

Through the John Stockton and Karl Malone era and a trying time of transition to now, when one doesn't have to look hard to see Stockton and Malone reincarnated in Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer, Sloan's teams are marked by their physical play, diligence and execution.

Just like their coach.

He just won't admit it. These are different players with different motivation than when he scraped and scratched for a living as a Chicago Bulls guard four decades ago, so much so that his No. 4 hangs from the United Center's rafters as the first jersey to be retired there.

Still, in a league full of turnover among coaches, Sloan, a John-Deere-hat wearing, no-nonsense-taking or -talking type, is the one with an anchor firmly planted.

He is in his 20th year guiding the Jazz, the longest tenured coach in all of the major professional sports, with 202 NBA coaches having come and gone during that span.

As he again guides the Jazz tonight against the Lakers in Game 3 of their Western Conference semifinals series, Sloan is only the fifth coach to surpass 1,000 regular-season victories and has led Utah to the conference finals six times.

Nothing to it, right?

"Other than I've been fortunate to be able to keep the job," he said. "We lost 56 games one year and I was still able to keep my job."

Sloan, 66, responds to obvious questions with obvious answers, Clint Eastwood-like demeanor and all. Even his stance screams intimidation, his arms folded across his 6-foot-5 frame.

On why he never changed from his bread-and-butter pick-and-roll system after the retirement of Malone and Stockton to an up-tempo offense: "I would if I had those kinds of players. When you don't have guys that can run and run with guys that are more athletic, then you better do something to try and compete with them."

Or on why his pick and roll has been so effective throughout the years: "It's just a play that everybody runs and if you have a good passer, a good shooter, then it works pretty good," he said with a wry smile and a knowing laugh.