Officially, it has been a bit more than 10 months since Jerry Sloan retired as coach of the Utah Jazz after 23 seasons with the NBA team. But this is the first time Utah started a season without Sloan since the 1980s.
Nuggets coach George Karl, a big Sloan fan, admitted it was weird not seeing Sloan at Wednesday night’s game against the Jazz.
Tyrone Corbin took over as the Jazz’s coach in February when Sloan surprisingly retired.
“I think most people know that probably my favorite rivalry was against Sloan in my time of coaching,” Karl said.
“I told my coaches there’s probably only one Jerry Sloan, there’s only one guy that could have done what he did and do it the way he did it. It was a pretty incredible run, to do it that long.”
Time to expand the rotation even more? The Nuggets can easily play 10 players in any game. They might have to start doing it, because they’re in a difficult stretch of playing six games in eight nights.
No team in the NBA, even deep Denver, wants to wear out its regulars this early in the season. So the Nuggets might be forced to play more players than they had planned.
“I don’t think I have a strategy on that for the six or seven games, other than I’m open to evaluate on a daily basis what’s going on with my team and where my guys are,” Karl said. “There will be an opportunity to expand the rotation to win a game, or an opportunity might give me a situation where I can give someone more minutes because of wanting to keep energy and intensity and speed on court.” Christopher Dempsey, The Denver Post
