Jerry Sloan resigns: "On a Sunday morning, they near shot her best crown off"

Once a month, Omar Little accompanied his grandmother to church. She thought her grandson was a cafeteria worker at the airport, even though he was actually Baltimore's most-feared human, a stickup boy who wore a shotgun across his chest wherever he went. Though his grandmother didn't know it, Omar actually robbed drug dealers. But once a month, he took his grandmother to church. "Ain't no need to worry," Omar told himself, "because ain't nobody in this city that low-down to disrespect a Sunday morning."

Nobody was that low-down, that is, until they were. The prior Sunday morning, shots followed Omar's grandmother as he quickly hurried her from the shootout scene. He saved her life, but barely. "On a Sunday morning,"Omar said, "they near shot her best crown off." Omar liked to talk about how every man, even stickup boys like himself, needed a code to live by. But this was Baltimore, and the code that once said not to shoot civilians -- the code that once said not to harm anybody on a Sunday morning, or outside a church -- was dying. The city was changing, for the worse, and the code was disappearing.

Twenty-three years ago, Jerry Sloan began coaching the Utah Jazz. At the time of his hiring, people remembered Sloan as a player. The way he ran through screens, the way he clawed, the way he never backed down. Sloan's the only person whose competitiveness rivaled Michael Jordan's, Jerry Krause said, and he would do whatever it took to win a basketball game.

"He had very limited ability," said Krause. "And he got 300% out of whatever ability he had."

"Jerry Sloan was probably one of the most tenacious competitors I've ever seen," said Bob Lanier. "He'd get in your jock strap and ride you all the way down court."

He'd elbow you, too. And tug you. And trip you. And scream at you. And fight you, if he had to. But through all the play that some people call dirty, Sloan kept his code. He was a man of morals, a man of integrity, a man who just wanted to win.

He took the same integrity to the Utah Jazz, when he was named their head coach back in 1988. Sloan became known for his flex cuts, and his pick-and-rolls. He became known for tutoring John Stockton and Karl Malone. He became known for always falling short of an NBA championship, and he became known as perhaps the best coach never to win an NBA Coach of the Year award. Twenty-three seasons Sloan coached in Utah, and his teams had winning records in 22 of those seasons. He never did earn recognition as the Coach of the Year, but every NBA follower knew his value. More importantly, everyone knew what he stood for.

Sloan's teams became a symbol of his soul. They were never the sexiest teams; they would never be confused with Showtime. But the Utah players played with discipline, and they played hard. If they didn't, they'd have a 6'5" head coach barking in their ears, a coach who was still willing to kick their ass to prove his point, to teach his code.

He was hard on his players, of course. He had to be. He needed to force them to see his vision. He needed to instill his values; he needed to instill his code. No player was free from Sloan's occasional wrath. According to Mike Wise of the Washington Post, Sloan and Karl Malone had one verbal altercation eleven years ago. "Did you hear what Sloan just called me?" Malone asked afterward. "He done cussed me out like a damn rookie," he continued, still furious. Half an hour later, Malone had calmed down. "You know what? I needed that. I needed to hear what he told me today."

Sloan didn't tell his players what they wanted to hear; he told them what they needed to hear. I imagine he had very little filter to what he said. I imagine he didn't care whether you were Karl Malone or Gordon Giricek. I imagine he didn't care if you were black or white, or Cuban or Asian. I imagine he didn't care if you were a rookie or a twelve-time All-Star. If you were keeping Jerry Sloan from achieving his next 'W', you were going to get an earful. He wasn't ever the man to let anybody slide. And his players -- even though they sometimes fought with Sloan, even though they didn't always see eye to eye with their Hall of Fame coach -- knew he saw only winning. Winning was his code, and playing the right way was the means to getting there.

I didn't know when Jerry Sloan would resign, or retire. He seemed like he would always be in Utah. It's tough to think about Utah without him, or the NBA without him. If I ever had been able to envision Jerry Sloan leaving, he would have been leaving on his own terms. I never once imagined how his career would actually end, with team-wide turmoil, rumors of Deron Williams' discontent, and Sloan's words: "It was time for me to get out. I didn't want to be a hindrance to the team, or to anyone."

If Sloan hadn't really lost the team, he thought he had. He couldn't get through to his players anymore. The league's longest-tenured coach, one of the most respected figures in NBA history, didn't want to be a hindrance. His code wasn't working anymore. So he left, with a few tears streaming down his cheeks. I never thought Sloan, the pinnacle of toughness that he was, could cry. But leaving the game -- the game that he spent his whole life pouring his soul into; the game that has shaped him; the game that he's had as much an effect on as almost any human being currently alive -- can reduce even Jerry Sloan to raw emotions.

I'm not bothered that Sloan left Utah. That was always going to happen, some day. I'm bothered by the way he left, leaving behind a team that no longer realized his contributions to the game, a team that no longer recognized his code. If you're going to shoot somebody, don't do it on a Sunday, and don't kill a civilian. And if you're going to tune out a coach, tune out a lesser one, tune out someone who doesn't have only winning in his sights, tune out someone who hasn't pieced together 22 winning seasons in the last 23 years.

Disrespecting Jerry Sloan is just as low-down as disrespecting a Sunday morning. Where's the code, people? Where's the code?