Sloan's coaching, and more from Oklahoma City

OKLAHOMA CITY — Starting with Jerry Sloan’s coaching effort, a few leftover thoughts from the Jazz’s New Year’s Eve loss Thursday at Oklahoma City …

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Beyond a late-game foul call on Paul Millsap that led to Nick Collison’s game-winning free throws, what bugged the Jazz most about losing to the Thunder may have been that it happened despite Sloan’s coaching-like-crazy efforts to squeeze everything out of his club that he possibly could.
“He made some good adjustments, I thought,” point guard Deron Williams said.
“It’s frustrating, because he worked hard,” Millsap added, “and the guys that was on the court, everybody played their role in that fourth quarter to put ourselves in a winning position. We played a great fourth quarter, and when we don’t come up with that win down the wire it’s a tough loss for us.”
Rookie Wesley Matthews was asked if that was the most animated he’d ever seen Sloan on the sideline.
He said it was — in person.
But, Matthews added, “I’ve seen him on TV plenty of times.”

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Matthews also was asked about how much heartbreak there was in the Jazz lockerroom following the one-point loss.
“There’s a lot,” he said. “I mean, as well as we did at times, and to not come out with the victory — I mean, it’s tough.”
“It’s a tough one to swallow,” Williams added. “We were right there. We played good enough defense the whole game to win the basketball game. We just … offensively we didn’t have everybody going.”

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Williams faulted himself for some of that, especially in the opening half.
“Our offense wasn’t really clicking,” he said. “I couldn’t get anything going early — and we still were in the ballgame, we still had chances to win.”

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And finally, Millsap was asked if he thinks he can ever win — despite being a second-round draft choice — some actual respect from referees.
“I don’t even like to think about it,” he said. “I’ve just got to get out there and play basketball. What happens happens. … I have no control over anything else that goes on but my play out there.”

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