CHICAGO, IL - CIRCA 1975: Jerry Sloan #4 and Tom Boerwinkle #18 of the Chicago Bulls waits at the ... [+]
Longtime Chicago Bulls GM and dynasty architect Jerry Krause was many things and inspired plenty of opinions, but no one could ever accuse him of indirectness. The man came right out and told reporters he’d be relieving one of the most successful coaches in NBA history at the end of an upcoming season – coming off two straight championships! Perhaps he was a bit too honest.
Krause also got about as much experience around maniacal competitors as any human being could reasonably stomach, as viewers of ESPN’s recent The Last Dance documentary are well aware. So when he talked about former Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, whom Krause was remembering from his 10 years in Chicago as a Bulls player, it was worthy of a raised eyebrow.
“The only person that I can say that I know, personally, that competed as hard as Michael Jordan was Jerry Sloan,” Krause said as part of an ESPN Vintage documentary on Sloan.
Sloan the coach was as fiery as they come. He blew kisses at Dennis Rodman after almost certainly challenging the big man to a fight; he shoved referee Courtney Kirkland over a missed out-of-bounds call.
Sloan the player, though, may have bested his future coaching self in the intensity department. Is it possible for a nickname like “Charley Hustle” to be an understatement? Maybe for Jerry.
Those who saw him as a player can’t help but laud him with old-timey clichés. Rick Adelman gave the token “hated him as an opponent, loved him as a teammate” line. Dave Bing said playing against him felt like “being in a fight.” Jerry West said, simply, that “we don’t have those kinds of players playing today.”
Sloan would be considered tenacious in today’s game. He was something else altogether in his era. He didn’t just take charges; he leaned in to accentuate the contact.
“You heard that all your life: ‘Stay between your man and the basket,’” Sloan once said. “As simple as that sounds, that’s a pretty difficult thing to do.”
It was more than just grit, though. Sloan was also one of the premier wing defenders in the game during his time, teaming with Norm Van Lier to form maybe the league’s most fearsome defensive backcourt in Chicago.
He made the All-Defense team in six of his 11 NBA seasons, including four 1st Team nods (in 1973-74, he and Van Lier both made the All-Defense 1st Team). It was a smaller league then, sure, but being among the handful of best defensive guards in the population is nothing to sneeze at.
“Jerry Sloan was probably one of the most tenacious defenders that I have ever seen,” said Bob Lanier, former Pistons and Bucks star. “He’d get in your jock strap and ride you all the way down the court.”
Limited tape available from the day shows several instances of Sloan busting ass back in transition to nab steals and create chances the other way:
In that same black-and-white broadcast above, Warriors color man Hank Greenwald uttered maybe the quintessential Sloan quote from his era as a player:
“You know, I think that’s the first time I can recall seeing Jerry Sloan without some kind of a knee brace or thigh pad or something on,” Greenwald said. “He almost looks naked out there tonight.”
Yeah, Sloan got hurt a lot. That’s one of the downsides of treating your body as a crash dummy.
“Ankles swollen up, broken noses, fingers, this and that,” Jerry said of his various nicks. “That’s the fun part, seeing who’s tough enough to fight through a little bit of adversity.”
The NBA only began tracking steals for the 1973-74 season, when Sloan was already 31 and sporting over 20,000 NBA minutes on his legs. He was still fourth and seventh in the league for steals in that season and the next, though, and was likewise in the league’s top 10 for Defensive Box Plus-Minus those same two years (BPM requires steals and blocks to be calculated, so it’s not available prior to this point either).
Sloan even made two All-Star games in 1967 and 1969. He’s never mentioned among the game’s innovators, but there are those who credit him with a lasting impact.
“He set a tone defensively for the rest of the league years after to follow,” said Calvin Murphy, longtime Houston Rocket and currently a broadcaster for the team. “Every team tried to find them a Jerry Sloan.”
This was no journeyman, even if his coaching exploits eventually overshadowed the player. Hell, Sloan even averaged a robust 16-plus points a night on 42.5% from the field (that was pretty good for a guard back then) between 1967 and 1972, his physical prime.
Both on the floor and behind the bench, though, it always came back to hard work for this farm-boy turned basketball legend.
“That was a tremendous feeling, to play with guys who walked off the floor and knew they’d played as hard as they could,” Sloan said. “There has to be some satisfaction in trying.”
