| Champaign Party Authored by Matt Welker - June 29, 2005 - 2:00 am
Consider it an early retirement present for Coach Jerry Sloan. At the end of a terrible season in which players didn’t listen, didn’t execute and didn’t defend, Sloan seemed spent, older than ever. It seemed he had aged a decade in a single year. He went home to his farm in Southern Illinois for a couple of weeks and worked, fiddling around with his antiques, thinking about the old-fashioned style of basketball that he used to play.
Chances are he also watched that new-fangled invention called a television, say that other Illini team. This was a man who had once brought in Troy Hudson as a rookie free agent because he was a Saluki. Perhaps Jerry saw a player forged in his own image—tough, all-business, a defender and a leader. Deron Williams locked down previously scorching Salim Stoudamire and Francisco Garcia, and lead his team to the most improbable of comebacks against Arizona and the painfully slick Lute Olson.
Maybe Sloan ruminated on how such big shots and big stops had been in such short supply on his NBA team, and reminisced about how spoiled he had been by the presence of John Stockton for 16 years of his coaching. Jerry Sloan had become a winner by coaching winners who in turn led his team to play the right way, his way … or the highway. He couldn’t go out like that, he needed to return to coach for at least one more year, with the caveat that he would be more involved in personnel decisions.
"Get me Deron Williams," I imagine him gruffly imploring Jazz GM Kevin O’Connor and/or Owner Larry Miller as the extent of his involvement. And so they did, sending a pick they’d gotten from shipping out Jon Amaechi’s and trading Pituitary Podkolzine to Dallas, and another pick derived from Carlos Arroyo’s insubordination. Last night at the Delta Center Jazz draft party "with the third pick in the 2005 NBA Draft, the Utah Jazz select Deron Williams." Everyone cheered, although many would have preferred Chris Paul. They cheered because they were cheering for Jerry Sloan.
Paul may prove to be a better player, certainly more exciting, but he can flash his bling on Bourbon Street because Jerry Sloan and the Utah Jazz, with stable, steady Deron Williams driving the tractor, ride again and it’s a beautiful thing. He and Carlos Boozer and their tattoos can rekindle the pick-and-roll (with Memo on the wing), and we won’t worry about Giricek or Snyder or Bell or second rounder CJ Miles dominating the ball in a two-guard front because one man will handle the ball all of the time for 40 minutes a game. Stay in shape Deron, because you’re being counted on.
By the time the Jazz reeled in a Whalen of a second round pick at #51, only 20 of the 2,000 fans who showed up remained. And even though 99% of us were teetotaling—this is Utah after all, we true fans (there are more of us than Bill Simmons thinks) popped open a bottle of Champaign because the Jazz are going to open a can of whoopass again. Eventually neither you nor they will have to settle for a well-fought second place.
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