Sloan, Jerry

Jerry Sloan, original name Gerald Eugene Sloan, byname Spider, (born March 28, 1942, McLeansboro, Illinois, U.S.—died May 22, 2020, Salt Lake City, Utah), American professional basketball player and coach who was one of the best defensive guards and hard-nosed rebounders in the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a Chicago Bull and who became the first coach to win 1,000 games with a single team, the Utah Jazz.

After attending the University of Illinois briefly and then working in an oil field, Sloan played collegiately for Evansville University, which he led to consecutive Division II championships in 1964 and 1965. After playing one year for the Baltimore Bullets, Sloan was selected in the expansion draft by the Bulls for that franchise’s maiden season.

His intense playing style—characterized by some opponents as “dirty”—earned Sloan admiration in Chicago and understandable enmity elsewhere. In his 11 years as a player in the NBA, Sloan took considerable punishment on the court, mainly because he did not back away from making skin-peeling dives for loose balls or from taking charges from behemoths such as Wilt Chamberlain. Sloan’s knack for outleaping taller opponents to snatch one-handed rebounds reminded some Chicago Stadium fans of an eagle’s pouncing on its prey. When the equally tough Norm Van Lier joined Sloan in 1971, the Bulls had what some believe was the NBA’s best-ever defensive backcourt. But, despite the scoring punch provided by forwards Chet Walker and Bob Love and the rebounding and slick passing contributed by centre Tom Boerwinkle during much of the eight-year reign of combative coach Dick Motta, the Bulls could not win the NBA title.

In 1976 a knee injury ended Sloan’s playing career, over the course of which he had averaged 14.0 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 2.5 assists per game. He became the Bulls’ coach in 1979 but was fired after two and a half seasons of trying to rebuild the team in his image. In 1984, after a short tenure as a scout, Sloan became an assistant to Frank Layden, head coach of the Utah Jazz. Layden stepped down in 1988 to allow Sloan to take over the team.

Bringing the same values of self-reliance and total effort that he had learned in the oil fields and had employed as a player to his no-nonsense work ethic as the coach of the Jazz, Sloan built the team into a dominant force in the Western Conference. Blessed with one of the NBA’s best inside-outside combinations—power forward Karl Malone and point guard John Stockton—the Sloan-coached Jazz piled up 50-win seasons year after year, repeatedly making runs in the playoffs and earning Sloan one of the best career winning percentages in league history. Though he could not win a championship as a player or coach with the Chicago Bulls, neither could he win a championship against Chicago, as the Michael Jordan-led Bulls denied Utah the NBA title in the finals in 1997 and 1998. In February 2011 Sloan abruptly resigned as coach of the Jazz. His career totals included 1,221 coaching wins and 803 losses. He returned to the Jazz in 2013 as a consultant for the franchise. Three years later Sloan announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson disease and Lewy body dementia. He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.