Gordon Monson: A proud, loud and vulgar voice from the past cries out to the Utah Jazz

It’s not easy being what the Utah Jazz are.

And what exactly are they, what’s the right word?

Pick out your favorite.

Lousy. Awful. Horrible. Pathetic. Terrible. Lame. Brutal. Dreadful. Wretched. Inferior. Abysmal. Crappy. Atrocious. Odious. Ugly. Sad. Bad. Miserable.

Maybe that last one is more what the fans are, but it probably fits most of the players’ and coaches’, too.

Nobody likes to lose. Even worse, nobody likes to try to lose. Nobody, at least, with any self-respect and pride. And that’s exactly what most of the Jazz players and coaches were raised on. That’s a good part of the reason they’ve made it to where they are — playing and coaching in the best basketball league on God’s green earth.

And while the vast majority of Jazz fans have never played or coached at that level, though many of them may have experienced their own shares of success at whatever they do, they most certainly have watched at that level.

In that way, the Jazz are a franchise that is like a melon that’s been sliced in two and then plopped back together slightly off center. It is a club that on the one hand, as everyone around here knows, has never won an NBA title, but that on the other has lived and breathed mostly in excellence or something close to it. If they’ve rarely been great, they’ve so frequently been varying shades of good. Almost great. Almost always good. Perhaps not the antipodal point of the words listed above, but most definitely far-distant from it.

And so, when the Jazz lost their 60th game the other night, something no Utah Jazz team had ever done before, ahead of the other limping outfits doing like the Jazz what they can to bottom out for advantageous positioning and percentages in the coming draft, it was a bittersweet pill to ingest.

But a necessary one. At least one made necessary by Jazz management, a small group of minds that disassembled an annual playoff team with little financial flexibility, getting rid of players who absorbed that flexibility and who also enabled the Jazz to go on being what they traditionally had been — good, not great, in part because that group thought it collectively could use its joint acumen to outsmart the rest of the league and break on through to the other side of good, the better side, the best side.

It hasn’t turned out that way — not yet. Not even close. And the process to getting closer to great is harder than a lot of people, likely including the ones making the decisions in the attempt to cross that threshold, thought. It’s a painful process, whether it’s trustable or not, to undergo. It could be that the Jazz will get there one day, someday. And it could be that the Jazz have transformed their once-proud franchise into the 1980s L.A. Clippers, the team that perennially lost games, perennially picked high in the draft, and perennially continued losing.

Not a single soul knows with exactness how it’s all going to turn out.

No pain, no gain, right?

It’s just that the Jazz, even in the years when they struggled, centered their existence on doing everything they could to win. That was their identity, that was Jerry Sloan’s work signature. Bust your hump, compete, win or die trying. The mighty lion’s sleepy eyes are closed now, may he rest in peace.

His old team’s signature now is to try to lose.

It’s hard enough on Will Hardy. It would have been impossible for Sloan.

But it’s the reality the Jazz now face. And once the powers decided this was the path they wanted to take, once they unloaded their All-Stars in exchange for their flexibility, there’s no proper way to back out of it, other than to lose until the losing leads to winning. The winning can only come with great decisions and good luck, and also a fortuitous trade here or there.

To reiterate, it’s not easy, especially for a club and its fans that are used to the opposite, the polar opposite, of what they’re experiencing now. Bust your hump, compete, win or die trying is nowhere in sight.

Those sentiments bring to mind my all-time favorite quote — uttered to me a long, long time ago, by Frank Layden — about Jerry Sloan. I still remember the tone of his voice and the expression on his face when he offered up not just a quote, but THE quote about Jerry, the one I’ve included here and I’ve heard others repeat what seems like a thousand times. And it applied not just to the coach, but to the good-but-imperfect teams he mentored.

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“Nobody fights with Jerry because you know the price would be too high. You might come out the winner, at his age you might even lick him, but you’d lose an eye, an arm, your testicles in the process. Everything would be gone.”

Remember when the Jazz played and competed like Sloan fought?

Yeah, it’s been a while.

Go ahead and pick your word for what the Utah Jazz are. And hope that one day, someday, they’ll remember who they are and what they should be, regardless of the talent they have on hand.

Which stirs another quote, this one from Sloan himself, spoken in an isolated hallway not long after John Stockton and Karl Malone had left the Jazz. He said:

“The streets are filled with talent. Talent will get a coach fired. You have to play with guys who enjoy each other and who will play together. Guys who play defense, who have discipline and who work hard. My job is to keep them in a mode where they have to recognize and depend on each other. I don’t have any All-Stars here. This isn’t John’s or Karl’s team. It’s not my team. It’s everybody’s team.

“That’s not a bullsh— thing. I’m glad to come back and try to coach this group. I’m grateful for the chance. If we play together, we can get some things done. Good basketball is good basketball.”

It’s not lousy … awful … horrible … pathetic … terrible … lame … brutal … dreadful … wretched … inferior … abysmal … crappy … atrocious … odious … ugly … sad … bad … or miserable basketball.

Take it from a coach who knew, a man whose competitive attitude the Jazz should remember and — as soon as possible, as soon as they have what they need — emulate.

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