Jerry Sloan has been coaching the Utah Jazz for 20 years. He has run the same system the whole time. Here it is, in a nutshell: Turn basketball into football. On offense, turn your guards and forwards into running backs and linemen. On defense, get your hands and shoulders in there, hit the gaps, harass like hell, disrupt the play. Above all, accustom the referees to watching and managing the game as though it were football. It's very hard for referees to resist this phenomenon, because no matter what the rule book says, you get used to patterns of behavior. You end up adjusting your standards for blowing the whistle, whether you mean to or not. This is the system Sloan ran with Stockton and Malone. It's the system he runs today. It works. You know who gets screwed playing with this kind of aggression? Teams that don't do it routinely. Teams that get mad and try to change their style partway through the game or the series. They get whistled for fouls, because they've neglected to establish Sloan's level of baseline expectation for contact. Their violence looks clumsy and angry by comparison. It stands out against their previous behavior. Don't get mad. Don't hit back. Set a consistent, numbing, high-contact standard from the outset of the game. And if you can't do that now, come back in training camp and prepare yourself mentally and physically to do it next year.
i hate sloan's tactics. i personally prefer seeing another style of bball. but otoh, sloan's jazz has been around for 20 years, no one has really figured out how to counter effectively. sloan's team only lose when they're out-talented. that says something about the effectiveness of his system, though.
How does it work? He has yet to win a ring with the Jazz. I am surprised they have kepted him this long, I mean he has had the pieces.
I agree; good post. To do this consistently, you need just about all your players to be mentally tough. The Rockets have a lot of players that complain to the ref about everything. I think we all know who they are. But I don't think the refs would let BOTH team go at it in a slug fest. If both teams played the Sloan way, tempers would flair and things would get very chippy by the end of the game. At that point, ticky tack fouls are called toward the end of the game, whereas murder was let away in the first 3 quarters, and the result of the game is in the hands of the ref.
Sloan's team will beat an evenly matched team most of the time. Sloan's team will beat a team a bit better than his about half the time. Sloan's team will beat a clearly superior team than his rarely. Utah is a midrange jumpshooting team that relies on a lot of backcuts for points in the paint. They can bang a bit with Boozer, but they dont do ALOT of ISO penetration. What their style does is not allow you to bully them because they dont go inside much except on wide open back cuts. If you pack it in to prevent that, they 18-20 foot you to death. If they were more of a banging/penetrating team you could get away with some of the tactics that they use because its allowed in the paint. Their style is to keep the inside contact to a minimum. This only serves to highlight any actual contact that does occur down low. So when they do drive it in or bang low, any contact seems to get called for a whistle because it stands out. The best phrase I can use for the overall Jazz style is hypocritical. Foul to death on defense, then play an offensive style that tries to minimize contact.
I agree I don't like the Jazz style of play but it is effective more often than not. No, they have not won championships but their style has produced a lot of wins through the years. What I'd like to see is the Rockets fight back a little. With Harris, Scola, Landry and Hayes we have 24 fouls to give up....use them. Play with the type of attitude the Jazz have and they will not like it one bit. Scola had 5 fouls the other night and seemed to be the only one playing with some aggression to match Utah's players.
They were fighting back. I could have sworn early on in the 2nd quarter that someone was going to get punched and or ejected before the game ended. The Jazz were getting away with murder. Personally, I think a ref was as likely to get punched as a Jazz player.
That would be ok....it would get the attention of the league. I just hope that Refs call all the fouls......regardless of situation....just call em. DD
I think I speak for all fans when DWill got a shooting foul on a play that BJax got a no call for on the other end when I say "WTF, REF??"
Sloan's system is no less dependent on having talentd players than any other. And even having talented players doesn't guarantee success - basically the same team that they have now finished in the lottery two seasons ago.
I was VERY surprised when BJax didn't hit back after getting elbowed by Deron in transition. At the time I was thinking if it was me or 80% of the players in the league, Deron wouldv'e gotten tackled 2 steps later in the middle of the dribble. Sure BJax would have gotten a technical for retaliating, but at least the refs and league would have taken note as well. I miss Sura...
this is a big factor of why sloan's tactics have been working. before the league decides to call everything as they should against the jazz, that utah team is gonna remain physical yet effective on defense.
And Deron was a rookie. Thing is though, they all got better within the system the next year. I really think the only way to beat Utah is to be clearly better than them. Right now the Rockets are just close to them, under probably though with Yao out. I think with Yao in, they are clearly better and of course wouldnt even have met Utah potentially until the 2nd round.
Thanks for making my point on how his system is dependent on players. Anyway - I've doen this analysis before - Rick & Jeff dealt with massive injuris in 2005, 2007, and 2008 and managed to bring in 50 win seasons each time. Does this mean they have better systems?
Does anyone have any numbers on how many years in a row the Jazz have been in the top five in the league in fouls per game? I know they're up there this year, and I think they ALWAYS are. This would be pretty rock solid evidence of their ridiculously aggressive style of play.
Exactly. Remember Sloan practically calling Kirilenko a girl last year? He has no patience for that kind of softness. Forgive me if I'm about to offend half the board, but our team is built around two girls. To put it more charitably, Yao Ming is a very nice boy. He tries to follow the rules, always. If he fouls, he admits it. If he barely touches some guy and gets called, he admits it's a foul (with his body language) anyway. He has waaaaaaay too much respect for authority to get a fair shake in today's NBA. But look at it on the bright side: The reason Yao gets ripped off by the refs is that he's respectful and conscientious, which in turn explains why he works his butt off and sets a fine example for his teammates and improves every year. Tracy McGrady is an artist. He likes to do everything with grace and style. He doesn't like it when you get in his face and mess with his grace and style. Does he fight back? No, because you can't push and shove with grace and style. It offends him that others play the game this way, disrupting his art and all. You can see it in the way he complains verbally and with his facial expressions of distaste and disapproval. The injustice of it all! For shame. Not to say he can't be tough. He can. But only for quick outbursts, or, on occasion, for some extremely artistic harassing defense. If there's no art in it, McGrady's not really interested. Guys like Mutombo, Battier, and Scola can do a lot to help. But we need some cajones from our superstars. If either of them's gonna learn this game and stick with it, my money's on Yao.
