Newsmaker Transcript

Jazz Newsmaker Luncheon
August 2, 2005

Dennis Haslam and Jerry Sloan

Haslam:

As you know, the league signed the collective bargaining agreement in the wee hours of the morning. Probably Saturday, and probably at three or four in the morning. The project of completing this collective bargaining agreement was a lot different than the last go around. I can’t give you the specifics, but just say that it took a lot of time to get the deal done. Because of the tweaks and the changes of the collective bargaining agreement…

Here’s what we’ve used on a day to day basis for the collective bargaining agreement (holds up booklet). This little puppy has about 275 pages. The new collective bargaining agreement…(pulls out stack of papers about twice as thick as the old booklet). This is what the lawyers had to work with. The lawyers for the league and the lawyers for the player’s association had to lock themselves inside a room for about a month to get this thing hammered out. And there are a lot of words and a lot of words that needed some changes. While the commissioner and Billy Hunter announced the significant deal points, some of which are in the news release that we’ve handed out today; there are some dramatic changes that we’re all going to have to learn about. We’ll have more information from a team standpoint in the future.

Yesterday we had a conference call with the league and the league’s senior lawyers did a presentation about the changes to the agreement and there were about 175 people on this conference call from all the teams in the league just to get additional information and get the opportunity to ask questions.

It was a relatively structured environment, but you were welcome to ask questions and they had specific answers rather than trying to interrupt 175 different people. So it was learning experience to us. We’ve been given additional information with respect to some of the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Some of it was not announced in the commissioner’s presentation with Billy Hunter, but a lot of it was just tweaks and additions that arise in the drafting process by the lawyers.

In the end, I think the NBA, teams and the players association were happy with the result. Naturally, the players want to earn more money and naturally, the team’s done want to pay as much. But today, the agreement that was struck was probably very fair across the board.

I personally think it favors the large market teams a little bit, making it more difficult for us to compete financially with the larger markets. Some of those issues might be obvious to you. We can’t sell our advertising at the same level as the Knicks can. They’re in the number one market for television, and they simply earn more money. They sell out every game; they charge more money than we do.

It’s a lot different in Salt Lake City. We’ve got the smallest market in the bottom three in the league in terms of our ability to compete financially.

But as you know Larry’s made a commitment. Last year he made a commitment to sign some players to contracts that we think will propel us into the future. I haven’t totaled it up in the last couple of days, but I think we spent over 250 million dollars in contract commitments. And we all did a lot of talking to Larry about planning, making a commitment to the community, having a winning team. Unfortunately last year we were plagued by injuries over which we had no control. We lost 251 games to injury. That’s a lot.

Mehmet Okur was the only player to play in every single game. That shows a lot about Mehmet, who people thought he was soft. But he came to play and had a pretty good season. You know about the others, Andrei had his problems, Boozer had his problems, Raul had his. It all amounted up on us. At the end of the season we were 26-56, the worst since I’ve been around, the worse since you’ve been around probably, Jerry.

But we held everything together and I think we’ve started over. We do have a plan. The plan hasn’t changed much from last year, or the year before. We want to be young. We’ve got a younger group of players. We think those players can develop as a group. We have the core of what will get us to where we need to be. That is to be competitive, to make Utah and Salt Lake City proud of the organization, proud of the Utah Jazz. We’re working to that end.

Q: What are the other advantages the CBA gives to large-market teams?
DH: It’s hard to describe for you, but the luxury tax threshold is going to $61.7 million as I recall. That means large markets can spend more money on players, and pay less tax or not pay tax. Our business plan is to stay under the luxury tax threshold. That’s our business plan. Now, we may not. There may be a situation where we say, “Let’s pay the tax to put together a championship team, if that’s what we need.” I think that Larry would be amenable to that if we were that close.

So the luxury tax will be $61 million, the cap will be $49.5 million. The escrow is sort of a large-market/small-market neutral, it moves from 10% to 8% over the next couple years. That will reduce the amount of money that will be available to all teams, but we need the money more than large-market teams.

Q: What is the plan for the roster situation, as far as guards and other talent needed to compete?
DH: We have a plan, internally. We don’t disclose the details of that plan for a lot of different reasons. One, it’s not good for us to let agents of free agents know exactly what our plan is. Because we’re competing not only to get those players, but we’re competing against other teams to get those players. Let me tell you there’s a lot of dynamic vis-à-vis what another team might be planning. For example there was a lot of speculation on who would be chasing Antonio Daniels, and how much money do they have under they cap, or available to spend? So we target, looking at the other teams in the league, filling a roster spot, say a guard or a 1-2 guard, and say we’re going to be competing against these guys, these guys and these guys. They don’t have any cap room, so we’re not going to worry much about them. Developing strategies and talking about it. Kevin and Jerry talk about it. Is this a kid we can put through our program. Then we have to talk about the budgetary elements. It’s really fluid.

We never really know for sure what other teams may be thinking, and whether they’re competing against us for a player. But we do have a plan to look at the one spot, the two spot.

As has been announced in the media, there is a trade afoot. I mentioned at our table a few minutes ago that the day the trade was leaked, Tim Buckley caught me coming into the SLCC building for the Rocky Mountain Revue. He said Denny, want to confirm this for me? And I said “A deal’s not a deal until it’s done. And I don’t really have any comment because we’re not supposed to make comments during the moratorium. There’s been a lot of confirmation from agents and others about what this deal is.

I can tell you at this moment that the deal everybody thought was the deal, ain’t the deal. It was changed in a matter of days. It changed, literally, yesterday. What we do is have a conference call with the NBA, and the NBA records the details, the trade. Each team speaks to the trade, and each team has to affirm that that’s what the agreement and the paperwork follows. The transaction that was proposed with three teams is now expanded some. A deal’s not a deal until it’s done.

However, it is known that there are three players involve din the trade that will leave the Jazz and where they will end up today is different than where they were going to end up a few days ago. Ostertag will be coming to Utah hopefully. We think the transaction is a positive transaction for the franchise.

The point I want to make is during the moratorium we’re not allowed to speak to this. So agents speak to it, agents start rumors, rumors run all over and we’re supposed to just be mum. So we have been mum. Jerry will talk a little bit more about the merits of what we think is a good transaction that will make our team better.

Q: Is there another player coming to the Jazz?
DH: No. It’s just that there are more fingers in the pie. These additional fingers in the pie are going to muck it up. Something could happen between now and the time we call in the trade. Because a deal ain't a deal til it’s done. Somebody got a bright idea and said, “Why don’t we do this with this other team, and we could bring so and so into the transaction. And that would be good because then we can send that guy over here.” It got way complicated, but we think it will work out.

Q: Is he frustrated by the influence that agents had? Has there been a change in the way things are negotiated?
DH: No, we just sit calmly at our desks. We never grumble. I can’t say that I’ve seen changes in that way, but I’ve seen changes in the power of agents to control the economics of a transaction. Today, filling out a uniform player contract is not as difficult as it was 10 years ago or even 8 years ago. The player, agents and attorneys play less a role in concluding transactions. Certainly they can direct their player sin certain areas, they advise their players – we hope they advise their players on the merits and demerits of a transaction. They certainly influence the decisions of the players; hopefully they’re all working towards their best interest which ultimately should be our best interest.

Q: Whose idea was the trade?
DH: Most deals that we do don’t work like that. Here’s the way they work, practically speaking: Kevin’s job is to network with other general managers and agents. And in my view Kevin has one of the best relationships with other general managers and agents out there.

Jerry Sloan:

You look at our team and look at what’s happened so far. I’m very excited about what’s happened so far. Look at the draft, and we got a player we think can make us a better team. It’s gonna take a little bit of time to see him get to where you want him to be. And that’s the way it is with a lot of young players. We really like what Deron has brought to our team; his dedication to playing team basketball, his thoughts about playing team basketball. In order to have a chance to win everyday – John Stockton and I were talking about this a few days ago – you’ve got to have the guys willing to try to do the right thing to win.

A lot of people want to do things to help themselves. My son has a chance to play basketball. He’s a sophomore in high school and he says “Dad how can I play with these seniors?” “It’s simple,” I say. “Learn to pass the ball and you’ll never have to worry about a ride home.” If you’ve got a guy that’s willing to do that it makes people happy.

I think Deron has some of those qualities, and we hope he gets a chance to stay healthy, play and do all the normal things rookies have to go through, like getting fouls called on him, not knowing what to do and how to do it, times on the defensive end. He’s smart enough he can overcome that if he’ll work hard.

The other two players we drafted are kind of interesting. CJ has a chance to be a good basketball player and so does Robert Whaley, if he keeps himself occupied instead of stuff off the court. If you look at the youth those guys give us, and the guys we already have here, if we can keep them healthy I think we can be a very competitive team.

We lost 56 games, and that’s going to be the biggest hurdle to overcome. You’re always concerned about young guys accepting losing. I think with young guys, especially a guy like Deron coming in who’s been with a winning program. They came very close with a team that was probably not as talented as North Carolina, but he put his team in a position to beat them with only a minute or two left in the ballgame.

Some of those qualities could fall off on other people. I think it could be a very interesting year. We also have to be realistic about some of the things that could happen. Nobody projected the number of losses of games to injuries we had. Quite frankly our point guard situation kind of went from good to bad and didn’t seem to get a great deal better as time went on last year. So that’s behind us and what we do this year…point guards are really rare, guys that can pass the basketball. Everybody took for granted a number of years John Stockton. John Stockton was a superstar basketball player but never really got recognition, it wasn’t because he wasn’t an outgoing guy or because he didn’t talk about flamboyant things, but he was a plain old fashioned basketball player. Deron has some of that in him. I don’t mean to compare him to John, but some of those things are there.

Why did we trade for Greg Ostertag? We were excited to get Greg back. We made the trade. I left Salt Lake on Friday and got home about 11:00 Friday night, and the phone rang. And I thought who would be calling me since I’m usually in bed at this time, especially on the farm. I picked the phone up and it was Greg. He said he was really excited that we were supposedly going to make a trade and have him here. I said “Greg; I didn’t even know we traded for you.” It was kind of funny because he’s excited about coming to our team.

I think over the years I’ve been coaching, the years I’ve had my biggest problems…Greg’s not a savior in the locker-room, but he helped us a great deal in the locker-room the year before. You all look at the blocks, the number of shots he takes, but there’s a lot more to basketball than those things. Greg and I have busted heads with each other and there’s never been any animosity when it’s all over with…Greg understands that as well as anybody. It’s who he is; on the basketball court he blocks shots. At the end of the game he’s still going to be 7-feet tall. You can jump all day and not get bigger. If you’re 6-6 you’ll still be 6-6.

But he can play against some of the bigger centers we compete against, because we’re a fairly small team. We need somebody like that. As an organization this was the right basketball decision to make. Regardless of what your thoughts and feelings about it, that’s what we felt would help us become a better team. He can play against the bigger guys, not a full 48 minutes but some minutes to be able to share against bigger people.

There’s been a number of times that I’ve had to apologize to Greg when he was here that I was very unfair with him. There was a time or two that we got sideways with each other and I was probably wrong. I’m not too big to say I made a mistake. I think he understands that, and I think he can help our team.

Andrei was here at our summer league and he looks terrific. He’s worked on his body. He will be a better player this year because of his strength if he can keep his strength up.

Last year I made a comment about Boozer just before he got hurt, that he had come to the realization how he could become a better player here just before he got hurt. You all didn’t see him in practice but a couple weeks before that he made a true commitment to making himself a better player. Then he gets hurt. He can’t do anything about that and we can’t either. We felt like he was getting overt the hurdle to being a better player. Not just being a body on the floor, but being able to do something because you’re in great shape. I strongly feel he’ll have a much better year this year if he stays healthy.

If I had to do it over, I’d play Okur 40 minutes a night right off the bat. I’ve second guessed myself a great deal over the year because his conditioning wasn’t good. I second guess myself more than you people ever will.

These guys have to learn to get in shape. It gives them a chance to be better. That’s one thing that anybody that’s stood in this league day in and day-out will tell you, you’ve got to learn to get in shape. It’s very, very critical to being a player in this league and compete at the level demanded.

We can talk all day about running the basketball all we want, being a fast break team, but it’s not very exciting if we don’t have anybody to push the ball up the floor. Guys aren’t going to run if they don’t get the ball.

Back to Ostertag, he seems very, very happy to be coming back and letting me rip his ass. Conditioning was never a problem. He got hurt last year and got his conditioning problems. But he’s been back and working hard. He thinks he’s lost a great deal of weight since he’s been back here. We won’t expect him to play 40 minutes a night like we have in the past.

We need guys who know what they’re supposed to do on the floor. If you can do those things you can win. I believe you can win every game.

Q: What are the benefits of having back Ostertag off the court?
JS: He’s an older player; he’s experienced what I’m about and what our organization has been about. He didn’t always agree with it, but he always stood up for it. There’s no reason why some of the other guys can’t do that. But you can’t force that on anybody.

If you look at this league and the teams that win and the teams that struggle, and that’s the one ingredient to winning.

Q: What kind of leadership is he looking for?
JS: Deron Williams is an interesting guy. We worked him out put him out there on the floor, and he couldn’t wait to come talk to us. I had little run-ins with John and Karl. There’s a couple of things they didn’t like that I did. That’s fine; I didn’t have a problem with it. They knew where I stood, I knew where they stood. Once we got on the same page we had a chance. But when you go on this side and you go on that side, you don’t have a fighting chance in hell.

Q: What about Boozer’s off-season?
JS: We’ve gotten good reports. His body fat is down to 5%, just a little below 6%. Karl Malone was a 4.5% when he played. I could stand and talk about running hard all day long but if you’re not in shape all you’ll do is hang on to the bottom of your pants. Everybody will look at your rear end, and that’s not a good shot.

Q: What made him want to get rid of Snyder?
JS: I don’t like to use the phrase ‘send him away,’ it was just the right thing for the organization to do this time. I probably didn’t do a good job of coaching those guys. Anybody who gets traded I guess you have to say I’m at fault. Same thing with Arroyo, I probably didn’t do a good job of coaching him. But I hope everything works out for them, wherever they go. I don’t like to make trades, I’ve never liked trades. I’d rather keep 12 guys so they know when they come to camp next year, they know exactly what they’re doing, they do a better job, and just go from there. Kirk wasn’t very happy here. He talked to me on a number of occasions about it. I think he held himself pretty well. The way we played may have had something to do with it.