FanHouse Jerry Sloan

FanHouse previews a player to watch from each NBA team in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The problem with hard-nosed, legendary coaches is that they drive such a hard line, demand so much, that you often feel like it will never be enough for them. Players will work hard, impress fans, show themselves to be "one of his kind of guys" when it comes to the coach's demanded work ethic and selflessness, and yet, they'll never reach it. The coaches keep them just on the outside, hoping to continuously drive them to further and further heights, 'til they're the absolute best they could possibly be.

One such coach is Jerry Sloan.

One such player is Ronnie Brewer.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Jerry Sloan was in his fourth season as Utah's coach and had just one playoff series win to show for it. So when Sloan's Jazz prepared to play the deciding Game 5 of a first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers in May 1992, there was some uneasiness.

"[The series] was 2-2 and going back to Salt Lake,'' said Charlotte coach Larry Brown, then coach of the Clippers. "Before the game, Jerry told me, if he loses, he might not be the coach next year.

"That was 18 years ago.''

We'll never know what might have happened had the Jazz lost. Utah won 98-89 to take the series. The Jazz went on to defeat Seattle 4-1 in the second round before losing to Portland 4-2 in the Western Conference finals. By then, Sloan's job was secure.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Carlos Boozer is still with the Jazz.

Well, at least he was 10 minutes ago.

Heading into the season, Boozer's status is the biggest issue surrounding the team. He said during radio interviews during the summer that he wouldn't mind ending up in Chicago or Miami, and that Jazz officials told him they were looking to trade him.

The forward, though, didn't get moved. And now he's saying that, if the Jazz keep him throughout the season, impressive things can happen in Utah.

"If they keep us together, we can be very good,'' he said.

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Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Monday, there are 22 days remaining.

No league's unofficial averaging coaching tenure is as short as that of the NBA. While NFL and MLB coaches last roughly three years on average, the approximate NBA tenure is at two seasons. The longest-tenured coach in the Eastern Conference, Lawrence Frank of New Jersey, has only been around five years. Only two NBA coaches have been with their current teams the entire decade; one of those particularly stands out as a symbol of stability amid chaos.

That'd be Jerry Sloan, the wondrous Jazz staple who, despite now entering his 22nd year at the helm of Utah, despite going to the NBA FInals twice, despite making the playoffs in all but three seasons of his tenure, despite being the only coach to register 1,000 wins with one team, despite being named to the Basketball Hall of Fame on the strength of his coaching, Sloan has never won a Coach of the Year award.

You figure that's just fine by him, though.

SALT LAKE CITY -- It seemed as good of a time as any to test these rookies.

Thursday's preseason opener marked the first NBA game for three replacement officials. The Denver Nuggets didn't wait long before resorting to some trickery.

Late in the first half of their 103-87 loss to Utah at EnergySolutions Arena, Nuggets forward Renaldo Balkman was fouled, and timeout was called. After the timeout, rather than have Balkman, a 53.6 percent career free-throw shooter, go to the line, up stepped Nuggets guard Arron Affalo, a 79.7-percent career marksman.

Thankfully, the replacements caught it and ordered Balkman to the line. If not, they might have been replaced.

Who doesn't like a list, especially on a Monday morning when that's about all you can handle?

Here is each Hall of Fame Inductees' best line from Friday night's ceremony in Springfield, Mass.:

Jerry Sloan: "Tom Boerwinkle ... 6-foot-11, built my backyard. When he bought the house behind me, I said: 'Tom, we were roommates one day and next day you're in my backyard looking out the window. He said 'I've got that figured out; I'll build a fence 6-feet-10, I can see over it and you can't.'

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- When it's your party, you can cry if you want to, and you also can embarrass yourself if you want to. Just ask Michael Jordan, who spent his induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday night doing his version of dancing naked on a coffee table with a lamp shade on his head.

What was that?

Whatever it was, it wasn't good. It rivaled anything you can name through the decades as the most brutal Hall of Fame acceptance speech ever. Soon after receiving a standing ovation of 73 seconds from a packed and adoring house at Springfield Symphony Hall, he went from sobbing to reflective to vicious.

The hardwood will be replaced by the red carpet when Michael Jordan and four others are inducted into the Hall of Fame tonight in Springfield, Mass.

Jordan, perhaps the greatest player to ever play the game, will be honored at the ceremony along with David Robinson, John Stockton and coaches Jerry Sloan and Vivian Springer.

Of course, Jordan's induction is a mere formality. But that doesn't mean it isn't creating more of a buzz than inductions past.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Thursday, there are 47 days remaining.

Five years ago, Andrei Kirilenko was considered a new kind of NBA player. Tall, skilled and athletic, Kirilenko had a way of impacting games in a way few other players could.

Not only did he score and rebound, but Kirilenko was also one of the best weak-side shot-blockers in the league. And his length and quickness on the perimeter bothered smaller players.

Cherry Picking recaps the previous day's NBA playoff action.

Carmelo Anthony has often been criticized for his failure to the lead the Nuggets past the first round of the playoffs in five tries, but that's simply unfair. Truth be told, Denver's history of early exits began long before Anthony even entered high school, let alone became the Nuggets' whipping boy.

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