Anyone hoping to be traded?
Sloan minces no words in tough talk at team meeting
One simple question was posed.
Honest answers were sought.
This, however, was no Sundance Q&A. Rather, the director was the one with the probing inquiry.
"I asked them," the Jazz coach said of his hapless crew, 15-30 overall and losers of four of their past five games after falling 99-82 Saturday to the New Jersey Nets, "if any of them want to be traded."
Sloan, whose club tries to reverse its woeful ways tonight against the expansion Charlotte Bobcats, was dead serious.
"If they did," he said after the Jazz watched videotape from Saturday's debacle, "we'd try to get them out of here."
No one, though, stepped forward. No one raised a hand. No one offered any discernible indication Sloan should put away his popcorn and call the movers.
"Nobody say anything," Jazz center Mehmet Okur said. "That means nobody wants a trade; everybody wants to stay here and play."
"I think everybody wants to be here," power forward Carlos Boozer added. "Guys, we're committed to each other. We have a good camaraderie . . . We want to win, and we want to get out of this funk. Just as bad as he (Sloan) does, we all do, too."
Surely, one or more must. Or so senses Sloan. Understandably, too, based on the Jazz's play of late.
"Sometimes it looks like that on the court, I think," co-captain Matt Harpring said. "And maybe there's some rumors going around about people saying they want to be out of here. I don't know.
"I mean, I know that I want to be here. I'm always worried about the other side — what they're saying about me. I mean, I'm the one that wants to be here. And it is frustrating to play with a player if he doesn't want to be here. I mean . . . 'You're killing the rest of the guys that want to be here.' "
Identifying the assassin, though, seemingly amounts to a feature-length mystery for most.
"I don't know who it is he's talking about, but . . . if there is someone or a couple players that feel like they can be better-suited elsewhere, then fine," Harpring said. "But they don't know what kind of destruction (that does to) a team."
"Nobody stepped up and said anything, so I don't know. But . . . I think Jerry (Sloan) has a right to know," added Raja Bell, the Jazz's other co-captain. "If people's hearts aren't in it, then he shouldn't have to play them. He shouldn't have to worry about guys not wanting to be here. If they don't want to be here, then we have to get somebody who (does)."
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