Utah Jazz: Sloan returning for 21st season

When the 2008 NBA playoffs ended for the Jazz last month, coach Jerry Sloan — as he typically does — declined to say for certain that he would return for yet another season.

This morning, however, Sloan said he indeed will work for at least another year in Utah.

"I'm planning on coming back, and looking forward to it," Sloan said by telephone during a break in chores on his farm in southern Illinois.

In doing so, Sloan will be fulfilling the final season that remains on his current contract with the Jazz.

It will be the 21st season in Utah for Sloan, who is tenured with the same team longer than any another coach or manager in America's four major professional leagues — the NBA, NFL, NHL and Major League Baseball.

The decision to come back, Sloan suggested, was a relatively easy one — especially after he had some time to decompress following a season in which the Jazz reached the second round of the NBA playoffs before being eliminated by the Los Angeles Lakers.

"I think we have a good team, and they can get better," he said of a club that also reached the 2007 Western Conference finals.

"And I think that's their ambition, based on what we talked about when we met after the season ended."

Sloan, who last week attended the league's annual pre-draft camp in Orlando along with other Jazz officials, plans to return to Utah in time to watch workouts next week in advance of the June 26 NBA Draft.

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com

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