New-look Utah Jazz prepare for camp with higher expectations
SALT LAKE CITY - Jerry Sloan wants to see his new team play before he'll consider agreeing with the higher expectations for the Utah Jazz.
The Jazz just missed the playoffs last season after preseason predictions had them winning 20 games or fewer. With the core of last year's roster back and free-agent additions Juneau-Douglas High School graduate Carlos Boozer from Cleveland and Mehmet Okur from Detroit, the projections for Utah are much higher this fall.
"I don't worry about that. I never have complained about when we've lost players. My job still remains the same," Sloan said Monday. "People say we have better players. We'll see if we have better players."
The Jazz open training camp on today in St. George, Utah. They spent Monday at their practice arena posing for pictures and speaking with reporters on media day.
The questions weren't about surprising people, as the Jazz pledged to do last fall. Instead, now it's about living up to high expectations.
Forward Matt Harpring's knee, which kept him out half of last season, is healthy, Okur and Boozer join All-Star Andrei Kirilenko in the front court and first-round draft picks Kris Humphries and Kirk Snyder are expected to make an immediate impact.
Sloan has much more to work with than he did a year ago, when the Jazz had lost John Stockton to retirement and Karl Malone to free agency. Utah defied widespread predictions of being one of the worst teams in the league with a 42-40 season, just missing the playoffs.
Sloan is back for a 17th season with the Jazz, coming back three months after his wife died of cancer.
"I'm just excited to get back into basketball and do my job. Things have been a little bit difficult for us the last half-year or so. My job is still the same," Sloan said.
Despite the offseason additions, Sloan is waiting before he acknowledges they were improvements. Even during Stockton and Malone's lengthy run, Sloan said he couldn't just rely on one player to carry the team.
"Everybody would like to have a guy that you can throw the ball to, close your eyes and see what the score is at the end. I don't see that with our team," Sloan said. "John and Karl were never that way. I don't have a problem with it. It's just basketball. It's not anything out of the ordinary."
The Jazz will spend the rest of the week training at Dixie State College. It will be the first camp with Sloan for Boozer, who played for coach Mike Krzyzewski at Duke and is expecting Sloan to live up to his reputation for being just as intense.
"He's one of those guys that wants to make things perfect. That's how Coach K was. He wants to make everything perfect. If it's not perfect, it's not good enough," Boozer said.
Boozer said Sloan was one of the factors that drew him to sign with Utah as a restricted free agent. The Cleveland Cavaliers claimed they had a verbal agreement, which Boozer disputes, when they didn't pick up the option on Boozer's contract.
Boozer signed a 6-year, $68 million contract with the Jazz and Okur has a $50 million deal - a rare spending spree by owner Larry Miller that immediately gave the Jazz much more depth than they had last season.
Utah also has an established pair of point guards in Carlos Arroyo and Raul Lopez, who shared the job last season after Stockton ended his 19-year career with the team.
Arroyo, who joined Utah as a free agent two years ago, got a 4-year, $16 million deal this summer as a reward after averaging 12.6 points and five assists in his first year as a starter.
"People didn't believe I could run a team. I always believed in myself and I think I've accomplished that," said Arroyo, who led Puerto Rico to an upset victory over the United States team that featured Boozer in the Olympics. "If you see the talent that they have picked up this summer, you can see this is going to be a great team, not only on paper."