The Sloan versus Nellie record is not good. Oddly enough, Nellie crushed both the beginning and end of the Stockton-Malone-Sloan era.
In 1989, in Sloan’s first season as head coach the team won a division title and Karl Malone burst onto the scene including donning the cover of the Sports Illustrated with the title “Bigger, Stronger, Faster.” In the photo, Malone is shown driving to the hoop over two hapless Warriors in those now trendy “City” uniforms.
That season Malone finished second to Jordan in scoring and won the All-Star game’s MVP award. Stockton led the league in steals and assists for the first time. Mark Eaton won the Defensive Player of the Year award.
What came of this magnificent team? Nellie’s hapless Warriors annihilated them with a sweep in the first round.
In 2001, more than a decade later, the Jazz retooled and brought on Donyell Marshall and Danny Manning in hopes of making one last run at a championship. They looked solid until the last month of the season when the team fell apart (sound familiar?) with a 14-12 record in the last two months of the season, including going 6-7 in the Delta Center. As the fourth seed, they ended facing Nellie's revitalized Mavs. Instead of stepping aside for the Jazz's last championship run, Nellie helped Nowitzki and Nash announce their arrivals on Utah's face. It was one of the worst collapses in NBA history. The Mavs came back from a 2-0 deficit, winning game five in the Delta Center.
History is not on our side -- and that never bodes well. I can't see the Jazz winning a single game in Oakland, but it all depends more on the Baron vs. Deron and the Sloan vs. Alzheimer's match-up more than the Tortoise vs. the Hare.
Am I the only one who notices that Baron Davis' body seems to have been constructed in the 1970s? I mean there is just so much '70s funk to the way he moves those thick legs. He's one of the few players that could be inserted into a game simulcast by Howard Cossell and it wouldn't seem out of place. Not sure why I am mentioning that, but I felt compelled. Okay, it's time for me to go on the record:
If Jarron Collins plays any significant minutes in the series, we lose. If Ronnie Brewer makes an 1994 Bryan Russell-against-the Portland Trailblazers-emergence, we win. And my biggest prediction. . . .this summer Sloan will discover that if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste more like prunes than rhubarb does.
I have yet to figure out how to swing a press pass to any of the games (it's probably not the best idea to send condescending emails to every sports journalist in town and accuse the head of the organization of being attracted to dead people). Despite all my efforts, my exposure to the perhaps the best games the Waste Dump will ever host is the same as it was two months ago. . . and now I'm starting to get spiteful. For those of you who are going to the games you'all better cheer so loud you endanger your Temple recommend. If you don't feel the need prove your insanity to 20,000 other strangers, I'll gladly take your place.
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