I was getting more irritated by the minute. The refs were either wearing blinders or had swallowed their whistles. For once we actually had seats close enough to the action to call the game ourselves with, of course, a bit of chemical assistance from the wandering refreshment vendors.
Somehow we had come into possession of a couple of lower-bowl tickets. They were easily the best seats we’d ever occupied in the L.A. Forum for any event. At a Rolling Stones show a few years previous, we found ourselves so far from the stage that Mick Jagger resembled an animated British flag. Keith Richards and Mick Taylor might as well have been bending rebar.
But for the NBA game in question, there we were only six rows back from the court. Obviously someone had given us the tickets. We didn’t normally associate with the courtside crowd, especially in those days when we wore class distinction on our sleeves as a matter of course.
Indeed, we were causing an uproar. The Lakers, once again on a win streak of more than modest proportions, were entertaining the Chicago Bulls, a tough, in-your face Western Conference rival that existed somewhat lower on the food chain.
In playing styles, both teams adopted the trappings of their hometowns. The Bulls performed as if their training grounds were the stockyards and the Lakers as if theirs were the freeways. Not that the Lakers couldn’t bang with the best or the Bulls choose the path of least resistance. Those just weren’t their first options.
These were the Lakers of Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Gail Goodrich and Wilt Chamberlain, and the Bulls of Bob Love, Chet Walker and Norm Van Lier. Oh yeah, the Chicago outfit had one other guy a brash, cocky, shooting guard who, if he didn’t outscore you, could, somewhat within the rules of the game, beat your brains out. That would have been an Evansville grad by the name of Jerry Sloan.
And it was the manner in which he defended Jerry West that became the root cause of my irritation that evening. To call him a pest would be to understate the obvious. When the Laker all-star had the ball, Sloan did everything in his power to take him out of his game. Using knees, elbows, hands, feet — not to mention highly-tuned anticipation and ball-hawking skills Sloan’s defense came just short of assault and battery.
You could tell that the louder we booed and the more vociferous we became with our insults, the brighter the twinkle in Sloan’s eye. Looking back, we were seeing the dawn of defense becoming an integral part of offense. We just didn’t get it at the time. And no one was more seminal in this league-wide metamorphosis than Jerry Sloan.
An All-Defensive honoree for each of the first five seasons of the 1970s, Sloan became the prime-shifter of the paradigm both within the Bulls’ scheme and the league as a whole. Not only were they “tough,” but, although far from the most talented, they could play whatever style their opponent dictated.
This particular night the Lakers even found a way to make the Chicago center, an early version of Greg Ostertag named Tom Boerwinkle, look athletic. But, of course, oafs need love too. You could almost see it coming. The upset, that is. Sloan had his mind made up and the resultant vibe didn’t bode well of boys from L.A.
I don’t think he ever backed down from anything or anyone — certainly not an opposing player or a runaway rogue John Deere tractor. And, somehow, I’m having trouble convincing myself that, in his out-of-the-blue resignation as head coach of the Utah Jazz last week, at this late stage he had suddenly found reverse gear.
He said he “ran out of energy.” I bet it would take a heap of explaining to get Jerry West to buy into that. That night in the Fabulous Forum and in all the days to follow up to the present, he seemed indefatigable. You never know without walking in his shoes but who among all who came to hold this particular force-of-nature in high esteem could ever dream he would go out this way.
Admittedly, he could be highly irritating as a member of the opposing team, but he did make the game much more interesting than it was before he arrived. In one fell swoop, he turned powder-puff derby into mixed martial arts. They just don’t make ’em like Jerry Sloan anymore.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.