Open mic night: Sloan's every word to be heard

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Dec 7, 2007 | by Linda Hamilton Deseret Morning News

Jerry Sloan on Monday signed another contract with the Utah Jazz to coach them through next season.

But by Thursday, he was at least passively wondering if he could last that long if having to wear a live microphone during some games -- such as tonight's at San Antonio -- will make him measure his words.

That rematch of the last year's Western Conference Finals teams will be televised by ESPN (as well as locally by KJZZ), and that means Sloan will be among the NBA's first coaches to go through a game wearing a live microphone under a new league directive pertaining to ESPN and TNT double-header broadcasts starting in December.

Jazz spokesman Jonathan Rinehart said Sloan had been requested by the network to wear the mic for tonight's 7:30 MST game.

Asked before Thursday's practice in Salt Lake City if he will have to be careful about what he's saying during the game because of the microphone, the coach with the often-colorful language said, speaking more mildly than militantly, "Well, if I do, I'll quit coaching.

"If I have to watch what I say ... if you can't talk the way you are ... you know, I've been a certain way -- now whether that's right or wrong, I'll let somebody else judge that -- but if they don't want it, then they can get rid of me."

Sloan said he wasn't sure how he will cope with things tonight. "I don't know. I haven't done it yet," he said.

Sloan and other veteran coaches, such as the Spurs' Gregg Popovich, the Los Angeles Lakers' Phil Jackson and Chicago Bulls' Scott Skiles, are not happy with the NBA edict that came down via commissioner David Stern at last summer's coaches' meetings in Chicago. Sloan, Popovich and Jackson have all said they weren't at those meetings, but there was apparently no dialogue about it. It was a Stern mandate, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Thursday night's TNT broadcasts of the Denver Nuggets-Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat-Portland Trail Blazers were the first games eligible for the new all-access media. Tonight's Bulls-Pistons and Jazz-Spurs matchups are the first available for ESPN.

Sloan is resigned to doing as told tonight, but he doesn't like it. "Well, I never thought any of those things were a good decision," he said, "but that's not my decision, obviously, and I have to go by the rules and play by the rules and see what happens."

The NBA is now requiring those coaches involved with games televised by TNT and ESPN on Thursdays and Fridays to be wired for sound, though it will supposedly be carefully monitored -- conscious of its public image, the NBA won't want a blue streak of bad words coming over national TV.

And the coaches must do network interviews during selected timeouts, though the comments will be taped and presented later in the games.

Also, as the NBA -- and other pro sports like baseball and football, which have already tried similar tactics -- tries to draw more attention to its product, there will be remote-controlled cameras turned on in locker rooms before and at halftime and after the TNT/ESPN-broadcasted games.

The panning cameras are not supposed to focus on strategic things like a coach's Xs-and-Os dry-erase board but will allow the viewing public to be peeping toms into locker-room activity.

"What do you do about it? You just do it. That's the rules," said Sloan. "It's like three seconds -- what do you do about it? You get out of the lane."

Some players may also wear mics, but, unionized, they have the option to say no. Coaches do not.

"As an athlete, it's just not part of your soul," players' union president and former Jazzman Derek Fisher told the Los Angeles Times. "It's just not a part of who you were growing up, for everything that you did as part of your preparation for games, or during competition, to be public consumption."

"It's going to be real hard on us coaches," Jackson told the Times. "We do things in a private zone. For people to be in the inner sanctum, where emotions are high and things are happening, it is threatening to us. We're going to have to get over it at some level. It's 'Big Brother,' though. It's very 'Big Brother'-ish. Those things are difficult to absorb."

Jackson artfully suggested he'd use the opportunity to speak well of opponents and talk about how his players should be helpful to those they knock down on screens and the like.

Skiles told the Chicago-area Daily Herald that the intrusions are "unnecessary. I'm told to do it, so I do it."

Popovich wondered to the Express-News if "it would give pause" to Stern and his staff if a camera and microphone showed up "all of a sudden in their next important meeting."

Popovich added, "I trust the league will do everything it can to keep it in-house and all that. But we live in the world. And most of us see that is pretty impossible to do."

E-mail: lham@desnews.com