A Hall of a Deal for Sloan

The news that Jerry Sloan will be induced into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame isn’t a surprise. The man is No. 4 on the all-time wins list.

What is surprising is that he has never won an NBA Coach of the Year award.
It’s beyond bizarre and has moved into the area of outright bias.

He hasn’t won a championship, but neither have Mike Dunleavy, Rick Carlisle, Hubie Brown, Avery Johnson, Don Nelson, Sam Mitchell, Larry Bird or Byron Scott. Yet they’ve won COY awards.

So let’s see if we can summarize this: He’s good enough for the Hall of Fame, but not good enough to win the COY.

Sloan finished second in 2006-07 and 2003-04. He was third in 2002-03.
He didn’t even win a COY award in 1997 or 1998, when he took the Jazz to the NBA Finals.

Part of the reason he has never won is because balloting is done before the playoffs, and sometimes the Jazz have surprised people in the post-season. Still, his team tied for the best regular season record in the NBA in 1997-98 and 1998-99. It wasn’t enough.

COY voting is often a matter of picking the flavor of the month. Scott, Mitchell, Johnson, Bird and others had their day.

Whether the award is given for great single seasons, or a great career, somewhere along the line, this Hall of Famer should have been called the Coach of the Year.