Gerald Eugene Sloan was born on March 28, 1942 in McLeansboro, Illinois, in the southern "Little Egypt" part of the State, closer to Louisville than to St. Louis, never mind Chicago. He grew up on a nearby farm, in a place called Gobbler's Knob. If that name sounds familiar, it's because it's also the place in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania where they keep the groundhog.
Jerry Sloan was 4 years old when his father died, Fortunately for him, he was the youngest of 10 children, so the burden of helping raise the family wasn't on him. But he did have to do farm work, and got up at 4:30 every morning to do them. Then he would walk 2 miles to school for basketball practice, starting at 7:00.
He was All-State at McLeansboro High School, and got a scholarship to the nearest big basketball school, the University of Evansville in Indiana. He helped them win the 1965 NCAA Division II Championship, and they retired his Number 52.
By the standards of 1st-year expansion teams, they did pretty well, With Sloan, former Temple and Warriors star Guy Rodgers, 1960 Olympian Bob Boozer, UCLA National Champion and eventual 1972 Laker Keith Erickson, and eventual 1970 Knick Nate Bowman, and coached by Syracuse Nationals star and later Bulls broadcaster Johnny "Red" Kerr (who personally recommended Sloan to team management), the Bulls went 33-48, and made the Playoffs, although they got swept by the St. Louis Hawks.
Sloan made the NBA All-Star Game in 1967 and '69. He was named to the NBA's All-Defensive First Team 4 times and the Second Team 2 others. He was good on offense, too, with 4 seasons in which his points-per-game average was 15 or higher, peaking at 18 in 1970-71. He averaged 7.4 rebounds a game, and was a career 72 percent on free throws.
He helped the Bulls reach the Playoffs again in 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975, the last of these being the Bulls' 1st Division title, in that case the Midwest Division. The 1974-75 Bulls included Sloan, Norm Van Lier, Bob Love, and Hall-of-Famers Nate Thurmond and Chet "the Jet" Walker.
Sloan retired as a player after missing the Playoffs in 1976. His college coach, Arad McCutchan, suggested that he return to Evansville as an assistant coach. This was a good program that had won 5 Division II National Championships between 1959 and 1971, including 1964 and 1965 with Sloan as a player. They were preparing to move up to NCAA Division I for the 1977-78 season.
But Sloan quit after 5 days. It was the best move he could have made, because tragedy struck: On December 13, 1977, on the way to play away to Middle Tennessee State, their team plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 29 people on board. McCutchan had retired as head coach, so he was not on board. His replacement, Bobby Watson, was. McCutchan was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach, and lived until 1993.
One member of the team was not on board. His name was David Furr, out for the season with an ankle injury. Just 2 weeks later, he died anyway: He and his brother Byron were killed in a car crash near Newton, Illinois. As a result, his name is included with those of his teammates on the University's official memorial.
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The Bulls subsequently hired Jerry as a scout, and in 1978 made him an assistant coach. That same year, they made his Number 4 the 1st they ever retired. In 1979, he was promoted to head coach, but lasted only 3 seasons. He got them to the Playoffs in 1981, and beat the Knicks in the 1st Round -- the only time the Knicks and Bulls met in the Playoffs before Michael Jordan got to Chicago. But they got off to a bad start in the 1981-82 season, and he was fired.
He was hired as a scout by the Utah Jazz, then an assistant coach in 1985. When Frank Layden moved upstairs to become team president in 1988, Sloan was named head coach. With Karl Malone at power forward and John Stockton at point guard. the Jazz made the Playoffs 16 straight seasons. He won Midwest Division titles in 1989, 1992, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2007 and 2008.
The Jazz always seemed to smack into tougher teams, including the Houston Rockets. In 1994, they lost the Conference Finals to the Jazz in 5 games. Game 5 was played in Houston on a Sunday, and a fan, citing Malone's nickname, "The Mailman," since he "always delivered," held up a sign saying, "THERE'S NO MAIL ON SUNDAY!" (Except in the British newspaper industry.)
In 1997, the Jazz finally broke through, beating the Rockets in Game 6 on a buzzer-beater by Stockton. But since the basketball gods have a sense of irony, they had to face the Bulls, Sloan's old team. Jerry may still have had the nickname "Mr. Chicago Bull," but Michael Jordan was now the face of the franchise.
The series was tied after 4 games, and the Jazz stood to have Games 5 and 7 at home, and Jordan was sick in Game 5. (Was it the flu? Was it food poisoning? Does anyone know for sure?) He still scored 38 points, at altitude, against the best defense in the league. And the Bulls won at home in Game 6. The Bulls beat the Jazz in the Finals again the next year.
In 2003, Stockton retired. Malone's contract ran out, and he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers. And Matt Harpring missed most of the season due to a knee injury. It looked like the Jazz were played out, and some people predicted a historically bad season. But Sloan did some of his best coaching, and got them to a 42-40 finish, though not quite enough to make the Playoffs for a 17th straight season.
The 2004-05 season turned out to be a bad one, easily Sloan's worst at 26-56. But he got them back up to .500 at 41-41 the next year, and then got them all the way to the Conference Finals in the next, before losing to the San Antonio Spurs.
He retired in 2011, 2 years after being elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, in the same election as Stockton. Malone, who played 1 year longer, was elected the next year. Coaches can be elected if still active if they have coached at least 25 years and are at least 60 years old.
In his 23 seasons in charge of the Jazz, NBA teams changed head coaches 245 times, and 5 teams were expanded into existence: The Orlando Magic, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Toronto Raptors, the Vancouver (now Memphis) Grizzlies and the Charlotte Bobcats (now the new Hornets).
In his NBA experience, he arrived in 1965, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson were still running the show, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had just arrived at UCLA under the name Lew Alcidor; and left in 2011, a year after LeBron James had taken his talents to South Beach.
To put it another way: Of the 9 teams in the NBA when he arrived, the New York Knicks, the Boston Celtics, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Detroit Pistons, the Los Angels Lakers and the San Francisco (now Golden State) Warriors are still in the same metro area they were in then; but the St. Louis Hawks moved to Atlanta; the Cincinnati Royals have moved twice, and are now the Sacramento Kings; and his original team, the Baltimore Bullets, moved to Washington in 1973, and changed their name to the Washington Wizards in 1977.
Jerry Sloan was married to Bobbye, his high-school sweetheart, for 41 years, until her death from cancer. They had 3 children, including Brian Sloan, who followed his father as an All-State player for McLeansboro High School, leading them to a 1984 State Championship, and being named Illinois' Mr. Basketball for that year. He was a member of Indiana University's 1987 National Championship team under Bob Knight. Brian's son Grant Sloan now plays for IU's baseball team. (Or has played for it, and would be playing for it now, if not for the Coronavirus closures.)
In 2006, Jerry remarried, to Tammy Jessop, whose son Rhett became his stepson. Jerry and Tammy were married for 14 years.
In 2016, Jerry was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which would be bad enough, and Lewy body dementia. This is a terrible combination, one which led comedian Robin Williams to take his own life. Jerry stepped away from his front office role with the Jazz, and lived in retirement until his death today, May 22, 2020, at age 78.
Michael Wilbon of ESPN, who grew up in Chicago as a Bulls fan, watching Jerry: "There certainly have been greater backcourts, tag-teams that won more games or produced more highlights...but none were tougher than Norm Van Lier and Jerry Sloan. May the great #4 Rest In Peace."
Rachel Nichols, also of ESPN: "In a league that often values style, Sloan was substance. He was consistent, he was straightforward, and he was damn good at basketball."
Kenny Smith of TNT, a member of the Rockets' 1994 and '95 NBA Champions: "RIP #JerrySloan .. one of the greats! No player achieves greatness without great coaching. john Stockton projected as a good little backup and Karl Malone as a quality power forward before meeting Sloan and became Alltime greats! RIP"
Scottie Pippen of the Bulls teams that beat his Jazz in the 1997 and '98 Finals: "I loved everything about Jerry Sloan, from the way he played to the way he coached. He was a tenacious competitor who represented the Bulls of the 70s so well. Jerry became one of my favorite coaches when he was on the 1996 Dream Team staff and it was an honor to learn from him."
Gregg Popovich, head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, who lost to Sloan's Jazz in the Playoffs in 1998, before beating them in 2007: "He was a mentor for me from afar until I got to know him. A man who suffered no fools, he possessed a humor, often disguised, and had a heart as big as the prairie."
Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago: "Before Chicago basketball had Jordan and Pippen, we had Jerry Sloan, whose death comes as sad news to all us die-hard fans. An original Bull, Jerry followed his All-Star playing career with a Hall of Fame coaching legacy. Our prayers are with his family during this painful time."
Gary Herbert, Governor of Utah: "Jerry was old school, a legend, and will be greatly missed."
He once said, himself, “There’s not a guy who goes to work at 8 o clock in the morning, that gets off at 5, that wants to read that basketball players are tired. I’m right along with them. I can’t live with the idea that we should be tired because we had to play.”
Jerry Sloan was an NBA lifer. And few people had a better NBA life than he did.
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