Fire Sloan Today

[Fido]

stevebozell is a perfect example of a Sloan hater using revisionist history to try and show how the coach sucks. Here is a link to the play by play:
http://www.nba.com/games/20080516/LALUT ... lay.html#4
You will notice they started "jacking" 3's at 2:33 down by 8 points. It started following an official timeout. You seriously don't think they talked about what shots to go after at this point? 4 of the next 7 shots were successful 3 pointers. Then--after a Jazz timeout--the Jazz surprised the Laker defense by going inside to Millsap for a dunk to cut the lead to 2 with 13 seconds left. Sloan was pacing the sideline calling out how many timeouts they had left, what to do if they missed a rebound or shot to keep everyone on the same page--all the stuff coaches do in that situation. Do you seriously believe Sloan was on the sideline looking for a "high percentage shot" at that point in the game?!?

[Fido]

I'm a well known Sloan detractor, but this loss wasn't on him. In fact I think he did a pretty great job this year with one exception: Matt Harpring. Sloan's mancrush on him killed any chance of developing CJ Miles, and Harp's stone hands and slow footed defense on Kobe cost us the series.

Killed any chance of developing CJ? He appears to be developing. In fact he improved on all his stats for 07-08 vs his career average with the exception of offensive rebounds (and personal fouls if you count those as a negative). He was getting on the floor 11.5 minutes/game in spite of the logjam at the 2/3 (Brewer, AK, Harpring, Korver). The rotation was shortened to 3.7 min/game in the playoffs but the shorter bench is expected and his playoff inexperience showed when he did play (the foul on a driving Fisher). I expect Miles to get a contract offer from another team this summer--something that didn't happen last summer.

Kobe worked EVERY defender that covered him. Scapegoating is silly.

[kebutah]

This is the Sloan legacy: follow a good regular season performance with an absolutely miserable one in the playoffs. There is a special reason he is around 50% in the playoffs-his aversion to making adjustments in a seven game series.

[jazzfan1971]

Personally, I thought this was the best coaching I've ever seen out of Sloan this season.

But, whatever.

[girlygirl]

While you could argue that Sloan has been there too long and the team might like to hear a new voice, this series loss falls more on the players than it does on the coaching. Boozer was awful for 5 of the 6 games and the defense for 3 quarters of last night's contest might as well have been invisible, given the number of open shots the lakers had -- many of them layups. This was a pattern throughout the series -- the Jazz stunk in the 1st half, then had to have a furious rally after halftime to try and get back into the game. Some of that is on the coaching staff, but more of it falls on the players.

[carrottop12]

I actually thought Sloan was great all year, I liked his rotation, he yanked Hart at the right time and never went back to him, he let CJ some, and Deron seemed to play nearly all game every game.

This series falls on Boozer who was a no show all playoffs long. Get his ass out of her, and he can take AK with him.

[ColdBlue]

I can't directly point the finger at Sloan on losing this series. We lost to a better team.

But, it seemed like every game we were in a 10 point hole after 5 minutes and continually fighting back. Why were we continually flat and not prepared to play?

[Pai Gow]

I can't directly point the finger at Sloan on losing this series. We lost to a better team.

But, it seemed like every game we were in a 10 point hole after 5 minutes and continually fighting back. Why were we continually flat and not prepared to play?

Because we would try to get Booz going early in the game, now you could say that is Sloan's fault for game planning that early but honestly, if Booz is on in this series we would be actually watching the Hornets/Spurs game with intrigue.

The only thing thing that upset me about Sloan's coaching in the Laker series was not givin Brew and Millsap more minutes..

[seejaydeja]

the only mistake sloan made (Which has been notable) is ending the game with either harp or korv instead of brew, why the hell don't we end the game with the same players ho start it? and don't give me the bs about korv's clutch FT shooting, it's pointless to have him on for that reason only when he is shooting like complete ****

[GP]

This is pointless, sloan is going nowhere, I didn't think he did a bad job this year. I wouldn't say he is my favorite coach in the league, but he won't be retiring anytime soon.