Jerry Sloan, who epitomized no-frills, hard-nosed, defense-oriented basketball during his 11 NBA seasons as a player, has lived by that same work ethic and dedication to fundamentals as a highly successful head coach with the Utah Jazz. In 1996-97 he led the Jazz to a franchise-best 64-18 record and Utah's first-ever trip to the NBA Finals, where the Jazz fought the Chicago Bulls gamely before succumbing in six games.       A four-time NBA All-Defensive First Team selection and a two-time All-Star, Sloan was a relentless competitor who worked at the game as much as he played it. Through the late 1960s and early 1970s he helped define the personality of the Chicago Bulls as a combative, blue-collar outfit that always led the league in hustle, floor burns and drawn charges.       After his playing career ended he became an assistant coach and then head coach for both the Bulls and the Jazz. In 10 full seasons and parts of two others, he has compiled 577 career victories and a winning percentage of .616. His Utah teams have made the playoffs in each of his nine seasons, and overall he is 11 for 12 in qualifying for postseason play.       In 1996 Sloan served as an assistant to Head Coach Lenny Wilkens on the coaching staff of the Dream Team that won the gold medal for the United States at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.       Born in 1942, Gerald Eugene Sloan was a hard working farm boy, the youngest of 10 children whose father died when Sloan was 4 years old. He grew up 16 miles outside of McLeansboro, Illinois ("There's nothing clean about it," he once joked), a town of 3,000 in a rural part of the state. The family barely scraped by, although they weren't alone; there were numerous large, poor families in the area.       Sloan attended a one-room country school until he reached high school. He enrolled at McLeansboro High as a shy, 5- 6 freshman. Then he started to grow, and his obsession with basketball became all-encompassing. Sloan would rise at 4 a.m. to do chores and make basketball practice, which was held in the morning rather than after school, so students could work in the afternoon. Sloan had a job on an oil rig, making $1.25 an hour.       The early morning chores, the long walks to school, and the tough lifestyle helped him form his life's creed, a no-pain-no-gain philosophy that resulted in plenty of floor burns over the course of his basketball career. In high school he learned to play the game at its most basic level, skipping the frills and going directly for the result: winning.       After high school Sloan enrolled at the University of Illinois but couldn't adapt to the big campus and left before the basketball season began. He transferred to the University of Evansville, a smaller school closer to his home. Sloan was outstanding there, averaging 15.5 points and 12.4 rebounds in his three-year varsity career. His basketball horizons also expanded. He first realized that he could go far in the sport when his coach, Arad McCutcheon, said he wanted Sloan to succeed him at Evansville after Sloan was finished playing in the pros.       "I had no inkling I would be able to play pro basketball," Sloan said. "I thought he was crazy."       McCutcheon was crazy like a fox; he knew what he had. Sloan was named the Outstanding Player of the NCAA Division II Tournament in both 1964 and 1965 as he led the Purple Aces to two national championships and to an undefeated season (29-0) in his senior year. His stats weren't awesome, but his intense desire to win impressed basketball experts.       The Baltimore Bullets had first drafted him as a junior, but Sloan elected to stay in school. So the Bullets drafted him again in 1965, this time as the third pick of the second round.       Sloan joined a Baltimore team led by Don Ohl, Bailey Howell and Kevin Loughery. He played sparingly as a rookie in 1965-66, coming off the bench in 59 games and averaging 5.7 points in 16.1 minutes per game. The Bullets left him unprotected in the NBA Expansion Draft that summer, and the Chicago Bulls snatched him up for their inaugural 1966-67 season.       The original Bulls lineup featured Guy Rodgers and Bob Boozer. The first-year team surprised the league with a respectable 33-48 record and a playoff berth, earning Johnny "Red" Kerr NBA Coach of the Year honors. Over its first four seasons Chicago failed to win more than 39 games but still made the playoffs three times.       Although Sloan made his reputation as a defender, he was also a competent scorer, averaging in double figures in all of his 10 seasons in Chicago. In the 1966-67 expansion campaign he averaged 17.4 points and a career-high 9.1 rebounds and represented the Bulls in the NBA All-Star Game.       In 1968-69 Sloan made his second and final All-Star appearance and earned the first of four selections to the NBA All-Defensive First Team. He averaged 16.8 points and 7.9 rebounds for the year.       Sloan began to gain a reputation as a tough guy. He did it by picking on the biggest opponents. Always working the angles for a slight advantage, Sloan once stepped in front of Wilt Chamberlain to draw a foul. According to The New York Times, the superstar took exception. "Step out in front of me and I'm going to run over you," Chamberlain snarled. Sloan immediately snarled back. "I'll be right here," he said. "You can't do anything more than stomp on me."       Opinions of Sloan depended on whether they came from an opponent or from a teammate. "Before I got to Chicago, I hated to play against him," Rick Adelman said. "But when I got there, then you loved to play with him."       Sloan's game was physical: grabbing, shoving, hacking, taking every advantage the referees would allow him, trying to take every inch and turn it into a mile. Some critics called him a "dirty" player. "I didn't think I was dirty," Sloan told the Deseret News, "though I'm sure a lot of people thought I was. I just went about my business. It was the only way I knew how to play. If I was dirty, then it was the officials' business to take care of that."       If he was a danger to opponents, he was even harder on himself. He always played on the edge, fighting through pain and sometimes through real injury. He once tore the tendons away from his pelvis, and the scar tissue from the damage left him with a permanently peculiar gait. During his first nine seasons in Chicago he missed major time only once, in 1969-70, when he was out for 29 games, although he still made the NBA All-Defensive Second Team that season.       The next year he played in 80 contests and averaged a career-best 18.3 points, adding 8.8 rebounds per contest. He also repeated on the All-Defensive Second Team. In the Bulls' third season under Coach Dick Motta, the club exploded for a 51-31 record, and Motta was named NBA Coach of the Year. It was the first of four consecutive 50-win campaigns for Chicago. The Bulls' only problem was that they were in the same division as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Milwaukee Bucks, who were winning 60 or more games a year.       With the Bulls, Sloan's reputation as an urgent, ferocious defender grew. He made the NBA All-Defensive First Team three more times--in 1972, 1974, and 1975. Beginning in 1971-72 he teamed in the Chicago backcourt with tough Norm Van Lier, who shared his down-and-dirty basketball philosophy. On a squad that included rebounding specialist Tom Boerwinkle and high scorers Bob Love and Chet Walker, Sloan gave the Bulls a personality that fit Chicago: blue-collar, tough, no-nonsense, truculent and combative.       There wasn't a lot of deception or trickery. Opponents knew what they were up against, according to Van Lier. "They knew they would have a tough game, a physical game, a hard game," he told the Deseret News. "And that we would hustle, hustle, hustle to get loose balls."       The Bulls had a fantastic year in 1971-72, finishing with a 57-25 record and leading the league in scoring defense, allowing opponents only 102.9 points per game. In 1972-73 the team cooled slightly, to 51-31, then bounced back the following season to claim 54 victories and take a playoff run all the way to the Western Conference Finals, where the Bucks popped the Bulls' bubble in four straight.       In 1974-75 the club was tougher than ever, leading the league by yielding a miserly 95.0 points per game. Their record dropped to 47-35, but that was good enough to claim first place in the Midwest Division, and they extended the eventual NBA-champion Golden State Warriors to seven games in the Western Conference Finals before succumbing.       Following knee surgery during the 1975-76 season Sloan tried to come back, but the joint had deteriorated. He played only 22 games that season, and the team skidded to a 24-58 record. Sloan had the knee drained more than 20 times, hoping he would still be able to play, before finally tossing in the towel. In his 11-year career he collected 10,571 points (14.0 ppg), 5,615 rebounds, and 1,925 assists, not to mention innumerable floor burns. The franchise retired his uniform No. 4, the only Bulls jersey retired in the club's first quarter century.       Sloan immediately moved into coaching. The Bulls hired him as a scout for 1976-77, promoted him to assistant coach for the following season, and then gave him the head coaching job for 1979-80. When he took over, Chicago's roster was dotted with such divergent personalities as Artis Gilmore, Reggie Theus, and Ricky Sobers. ("The team was put together in the dark," was Sloan's later analysis in an interview with the Indianapolis Star.) Disaster struck when Gilmore, who had played 670 consecutive games, hurt his knee and missed 34 contests in the 1979-80 season, forcing Sloan to use a center tandem of Dennis Awtrey and Coby Dietrick.       The Bulls won only 30 games that year, but the next season they reached a 45-37 mark, finished in second place in the Midwest Division, and advanced to the second round of the playoffs. In Sloan's third year, 1981-82, the club was stumbling at 19-32 when he was fired and replaced by Rod Thorn.       Sloan returned to McLeansboro for a year before Frank Layden, then head coach of the Utah Jazz, hired him as a scout for 1983-84, then as an assistant for the 1984-85 campaign. Sloan spent four full seasons in that role, remaining loyal to Layden and helping the Jazz rise to prominence in the Western Conference. Then, 17 games into the 1988-89 season, the much-loved Layden stepped down as coach and moved into a front-office position. Sloan was handed the head coaching reins.       The team was 11-6 when Sloan took over. He guided the Jazz to a 40-25 record the rest of the way and to the Midwest Division championship. Over the next three seasons Utah was a power in both the division and the conference, winning 55, 54 and 55 games, respectively, in the regular season. Sloan built a consistent winner around superstars Karl Malone and John Stockton as well as such valuable role players as 7-4 Mark Eaton and shooting specialist Jeff Malone.       In Sloan's eight full seasons as Utah's head coach, the Jazz have averaged over 55 victories per year and won three division titles (1989, 1992 and 1997). But until 1997, they could not reach the NBA Finals.       In 1992 the Jazz met the Portland Trail Blazers in the Conference Finals but lost in six games. In 1994 Sloan passed Layden to become the winningest coach in Jazz franchise history, and Utah faced Houston for a trip to the Finals. However, the eventual NBA-champion Rockets prevailed in five games.       Postseason disappointment continued for Utah in 1995 when the Jazz were upended once again by Houston in five games, this time in the First Round. Utah made its third trip to the Conference Finals in 1996, only to lose to the Seattle SuperSonics in seven games.       In 1997, however, the Jazz built upon their best regular season ever by sweeping the Clippers in the First Round, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers 4-1 in the Conference Semifinals and beating the Houston Rockets in six games in the Conference Finals to reach the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history. There they dropped the first two games to the Chicago Bulls, battled back to even the series at 2-2 and then fought hard before bowing in six games.       Reaching the Finals represented a positive step, but with Stockton and 1997 NBA MVP Karl Malone each having put in about more than a decade of NBA service, Sloan knows that time is short if this group is to win that elusive NBA Championship.

C A R E E R   C O A C H I N G		REGULAR SEASON			POSTSEASON
YEAR	TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT	WINS	LOSSES	PCT
79-80	Chicago	30	52	.366	0	0	--
80-81	Chicago	45	37	.549	2	4	.333
81-82	Chicago	19	32	.373	0	0	--
88-89	Utah	40	25	.615	0	3	.000
89-90	Utah	55	27	.671	2	3	.400
90-91	Utah	54	28	.659	4	5	.444
91-92	Utah	55	27	.671	9	7	.563
92-93	Utah	47	35	.573	2	3	.400
93-94	Utah	53	29	.646	8	8	.500
94-95	Utah	60	22	.732	2	3	.400
95-96	Utah	55	27	.671	10	8	.556
96-97	Utah	64	18	.780	13	7	.650
97-98	Utah	62	20	.756	13	7	.650
99-99	Utah	37	13	.740	5	6	.455
TOTALS		676	392	.633	70	64	.522