When Jerry Sloan no longer coaches the Jazz, you may very well be among the first to know.
There will no farewell tours, and little or no notice that the end is near.
Rather, like his predecessor, Frank Layden, did 11-plus years ago, Sloan is most likely to catch everyone off-guard and simultaneously make the world aware that enough is finally enough. If, that is, he says in his typical self-deprecating sort of way, someone doesn't decide the date for him.
"Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow," Sloan said, "and say, 'This is the time to get out of it.'
"I'm not ever going to do it because that's what Frank did, but that's probably who I am. I'll just say, 'See you all later. Get a new sheriff.' ... If it gets to work out that way — and they don't tell me the other way."
When it happens — one way, or the other — don't expect to see Sloan follow Layden's footsteps to a desk job in the Jazz hierarchy. Rather, it is likelier that the 57-year-old coach will exit quietly to his Illinois farm and the new home is he is building there.
"I'm just a basketball coach," said Sloan, the ex-Chicago Bull who has coached NBA teams in both the Windy City and Salt Lake City. "I mean, I'm not sure how I should be classified, but that's my job. That's what I've always wanted to do, and that's what I've always liked to do. I've never had any desire to (be in the front office)."
Sloan speaks as he does not necessarily because he is contemplating future plans, but rather because someone had to ask — what, with everyone and their brother, or, in this case, son, either resigning or retiring from the Jazz front office lately.
Layden, the former Jazz coach and general manager, revealed his retirement as president of the Jazz last Tuesday — an announcement that came just as unexpectedly as the shocker he delivered on Dec. 9, 1988, when he turned over reigns of the Jazz to then-assistant Sloan.
Eight days before Layden ended his 20-plus year association with the organization, Tim Howells surprisingly resigned as GM of the Jazz to re-enter the private business sector.
And this past offseason, it was Layden's son, Scott, who got the ball rolling by announcing he was leaving his post as the Jazz's vice president of basketball operations accept a similar job with the New York Knicks.
Scott Layden was replaced by ex-Jazz scout Kevin O'Connor, the man whom Sloan seems to endorse should Jazz owner Larry Miller restructure the franchise's front office and decide to name a new GM from the basketball department rather than the business branch of the Jazz's management team.
Sloan, understand, has no interest in the GM position or title.
"If I made a commitment to do that, I think I could do a decent job with it. I think I understand winning," he said. "(But) there's so many variables there: Are you going to have the wherewithal to do like some teams do?
"See, I thought Frank did a great job, and Scott did a great job, with what our resources were. Those are the things you have to have clear, and worked out, before you've made a commitment to something like that rather than just taking the job for the sake of having to retire. That's why I a guy like Kevin — he'd do a helluva job."
O'Connor left his player-personnel position with the Philadelphia 76ers to re-join the Jazz this past August, and the task he has is not an enviable one.
But that is not why the coach is so averse to becoming a GM. To understand why he is not, one must step back in time.
Sloan was a sophomore at the University of Evansville. The native kid from McLeansboro, Ill., was a physical education major who figured he might like to coach a high school club some day. Someone else had other things in mind.
"Before I even played a game, my college coach came to me and said, 'I want you to come back here and coach the team after you get through playing professional basketball,' " Sloan said. "And I'd never played a game at Evansville. I don't know what he saw, or what he thought. I think about that a lot, because I ended up doing that."
Sloan lasted only five days at his alma mater due to circumstances related to the 1977 airline tragedy that claimed the lives of 16 members of the Purple Aces program. From there, though, he hooked on as an assistant with the NBA team that retired his number as a player, and the rest, well, is history.
Coaching pro basketball was his calling. He went from assistant to head coach of the Bulls from 1979-82, a brief stint that did not deter him from continuing to do what he loves.
In another short-lived stay, Sloan never coached a game with the CBA's Thunder. But he did get a taste of what it is like to call the shots from up on high, a position he would never again hold.
"I did do (front-office work) when I was in the CBA - I had to do all of it in the short time I was there," he said. " And it was a great experience for me, and I had no problems with it. It's just that I like to be around the players. I like to be in the gym. I look forward to practice."
Sloan is a coach, and even the boot from the Bulls was not enough to convince him otherwise.
"Yeah, (getting fired) bothered me a little bit. . . . But then I went back and watched my son (Brian) play at a high school gym. I knew the high school coach, because I had gone to school with him. His son played, and my son played. And he asked me a lot of questions. I would sit at the top of the building and watch the kids play."
It was there that Sloan not only decided what he would be for the rest of his life, but also what sort of values he would pass on.
"They had a nice (high school) team, and won. But the important thing was they had nice kids, and tried to do the right thing. . . . That really reaffirmed what my thoughts were about trying to coach. You don't need to be perfect, but you need kids that are going to try to work hard and try to put out a decent effort. As long as you do that, I think you have a chance to succeed."
Which brings us closer to the present.
Sloan took an assistant's position with the Jazz when Phil Johnson, who is now back as an assistant to Sloan, left his job as an assistant to Frank Layden to become head coach of the Sacramento Kings in November 1984.
Since then, head coach of the Jazz is the only basketball work Sloan has known. He has taken Utah to the NBA Finals twice in his 11 previous seasons, and just last Wednesday joined Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics and Red Holzman of the New York Knicks as the only men to coach 600 victories with the same NBA team.
Now, he has no other basketball aspirations but to coach the Jazz — for however longer that may be.
"You have doubts when you start out in this business," Sloan said. ". . . Are you doing the right thing? Only later, I guess, can you verify you're doing the right thing in life."
Sloan is, he has decided.
That is why, when it comes to basketball, he doesn't want to do anything but. And when he is tired of doing it, he'll let you know.