Utah owner feuding with Karl Malone

A year ago, Karl Malone was critical of how things went down with the resignation of Jerry Sloan. He said that there was no way Sloan would have quit, intimating that he was forced out. He also publicly asked for the coaching job, despite not having the credentials for it. The wound was re-opened this week after Malone spoke with the Salt Lake City Tribune and basically pinned Sloan’s resignation on two things he alleged: Deron Williams busting plays, and ownership’s refusal to support Sloan against Williams.

“I know for a fact that [Sloan] was overridden on practices sometime on the road because Deron was calling our G.M. at that time,” Malone said. “ … You give a guy that much power, and he’s the kind of player you think he played hard all the time, but if he wanted to sulk he could sulk. … I never went to Larry [Miller] to talk about Coach Sloan. … It’s not one time, in my gut and heart, that I would go over his head.”

“That defining moment when [management and ownership] should have stood up for Jerry Sloan, they chose Deron Williams,” he said. “And Coach Sloan, being the coach I know and love, said, ‘You know what? We should part ways.’ And he said what he said. And once Coach Sloan says something, it’s history.”

via Monson: A year later, Karl Malone calls out the Jazz on Jerry Sloan’s exit | The Salt Lake Tribune.

Ooooookay. Awkward.

But it gets better. Jazz owner Greg Miller tweeted about Malone. And it wasn’t pretty.

So that’s fun. But wait, it gets even better! Miller followed that up with a blog post in which Miller explains why Malone has never been offered a position with the Jazz. In short, alleging he is “unstable.” Yeah.

The fact is Karl is still as high-maintenance as he ever was, but now he has nothing to offer to offset the grief and aggravation that comes with him. Some would argue that he could coach our big men. I would love to have Karl inspire them and teach him how to be warriors like he was. That can’t happen. Karl is too unreliable and too unstable.

via Greg In Utah.

Miller goes into detail in the link above regarding multiple meetings that Karl no-showed, and some odd behavior regarding autograph sessions and trade demands. Nothing specifically indicates Karl wouldn’t be a good coach, but it’s like any job. If an employer thinks you’re unreliable, you’re not going to get the gig o matter what kind of skills for the job you have. But then, that’s just one side of the story.

The weirder part is the very public feud that’s erupted between the franchise’s all-time leading scorer. When Jerry Sloan left, you knew there would be fallout. But who could have guessed it would result in a rift between the icon of the franchise and ownership,and that it would wind up as public as this.

One thing’s for sure. This is not the way Sloan would have done it.