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The loss last night and the other losses to lesser teams this year shows that the Jazz are not a contender. The Jazz have the following issues which were all evident last night in the loss to Minn.

1) Lack of veteran leadership: The Jazz are still a young team that plays to the other teams level. They dont consistently hustle on defense. The Jazz do not have the veteran on their team that will be in effect the coach on the floor. The guy that will yell at other players to get their ass in geer. Thats one of the reasons the Jazz didnt put one of the NBA's worse teams away early instead of going through the motions getting Minn hope. Sloan also didnt call time out and Boozer charged. A veteran team would not need the time out but this team is young and stupid and Sloan should have called time out to set up a play.

2) Lack of interior defense: Flynn and other point guards as well as many wing players can drive to the basket on the Jazz at will. Memo and Boozer do not have the athletic ability or lenght to shot block or intimidate. The only shot blockers are AK-47 and Fess and AK-47 is often guarding a guy at the 3 point line and Fess is often on the bench. The miss use of these two guys really frustrates me with Jerry Sloan.

3) What could help in the 2 problems above is innovative coaching!!! Unfortunately, Jerry Sloan is far from the right guy to coach this team. Why wasnt AK-47 guarding someone near the basket so he could intimidate Flynn on that drive? Why wasnt Fess in for Memo as he is clearly a better defender? Why was Deron on Flynn when Flynn had beaten him all night? Maynor and AK-47 could both guard Flynn much better in that situation. Why didnt Sloan call time out before the possession in which Boozer got the charge? Sloan cannot get it into his head this is not the Stockton-Malone team. This is a young team that needs a leader unfortunately the Jazz have no player or coach to lead so they dont lose to teams like Minn.

Such a wasted season for a young talented Utah Jazz team!!!! It looks like the Jazz will be stuck in mediocrity for ever!!!

Ya ya ya blah blah blah.....................

Yeah the Jazz suck and its Sloan's fault. Every loss is Sloan's fault and every win is just n spite of Sloan! Fire him and replace him with a better coach like....... oh, nevermind. WE JUST BEAT THE SPURS, ORLANDO AND LA!!!!!! Don't be a whiny puke and blame everything on Sloan. Either give him credit for everything or nothing.

Just ask yourself if Phil Jackson or Popovich was the coach of the Jazz in the two Minn losses would the Jazz have loss both games. The answer is clearly NO maybe they lose one because upsets happen but they never would have loss both games because those coaches would have made adjustments.

I didn't even read your worthless diatribe Toledo, but I was wondering where the "Abandon Ship / SOS" thread was this morning, just though you'd get it up a little bit sooner.

Seriously, do we really need one of these threads every time the Jazz lose? Keep it in the game thread, man.

You guys get so upset by what Toledo says, that you don't see he is right about Sloan. Good teams win big games--Great teams beat Minnesota and Sacramento!! That is the responsibility of the coach. He can't motivate the jazz players to play up against inferior teams. Sloan is a great coach-but I agree with Holy that he needs to move on and let a different leadership motivate the players the jazz have!

Inciteful Toledo! Keep doggin the boys hammerin you!!!

HolyToledo wrote:Just ask yourself if Phil Jackson or Popovich was the coach of the Jazz in the two Minn losses would the Jazz have loss both games. The answer is clearly NO maybe they lose one because upsets happen but they never would have loss both games because those coaches would have made adjustments.

Probably true. Are either of those guys available if we fire Sloan? No? Then maybe firing Sloan without a good backup plan would be a terrible idea.

This is like saying we should dump Boozer for nothing because Dwight Howard and prime Bill Russell would have been guarding the post better.

Simply put, there is no Coach in the NBA that gets forgiven as much as Sloan.......

2 losses to Minnesota this year is just indefensible...... There's no other way of putting it....... I'm not blaming Sloan exclusively, the players have to take a major part of the responsibility for this debacle, but Sloan's coaching, or lack thereof, is just pathetic.......

Give Minnesota some credit, they were actually hitting their shots. They played a great game and came away from it with a victory. The Jazz didn't play horrible, this is a game we lost at the free throw line. 21 out of 37 free throws (56.8%) will lose you quite a few games. If they had hit their average, this wouldn't be an issue.

Their was 5 blocks last night by the Jazz and none of them came from AK or Fes (32 combined minutes of play). The Jazz are well coached and I think many of you don't realize how lucky we are to have Sloan. When you eat candy all the time soon you don't realize how sweet it is. This was not a coaching issue this was an execution issue and completely on the players. They missed free throws, tons of layups and 2nd chance points, and got out rebounded by 12.

It's not really fair to compare Popovich and Jackson to Sloan, they've had ton of championship teams, while Sloan hasn't had that, the only team that came close to winning a title was a decade ago. You don't really see Pop do miracles when his team is not healthy, nor did the Lakers do so great with sick Kobe. Coaches are human, Sloan doesn't have the best team in the league, and he can only coach D so much, the players have to apply it! Also on our most recent loss, Sloan couldn't make adjustments to make the team make free throws.