Recently, we looked at the fact that P.J. Carlesimo had only one win as a Oklahoma City Thunder coach and reviewed each franchise’s least successful coaches. Just so you don’t think we dwell only on depressing things like coaches being fired, it bears noting that Jerry Sloan is now in his twentieth year of coaching and going pretty strong. Sloan’s years in Utah are marked mostly by success and a rage that few other coaches can match. But how did we come to have Sloan in Utah? Do we remember the back story?
When Sloan took over as head coach in early 1988-89, he replaced a famous Utah personality and coach in Frank Layden, who was widely credited for turning the franchise around. Layden had coached the Jazz for most of their Utah existence (about seven years) and had just taken the Magic Johnson Lakers to seven games in the playoffs in 1987-88. There was young core in John Stockton and Karl Malone at their peaks and plenty of other good players (Thurl Bailey, Darrell Griffith, Mark Eaton). Most coaches would’ve kept coaching such a promising team as long as they could. Why did Layden quit? According to Michael C. Lewis in “To the Brink”: “The job was no longer fun for [Layden], and he believed the referees were out to get him. So Layden handed the team over to the man he had groomed for it, his top assistant coach, Jerry Sloan….”