The Utah Jazz announced Friday that longtime coach Jerry Sloan died. He was 78.
Sloan had Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia. A former NBA player, Sloan was the Jazz’s coach for 23 seasons from 1988-2011 until he stepped down 54 games through his final season in 2011. The team won back-to-back Western Conference championships in 1996-97 and 1997-98 under his watch, though the Jazz and star duo Karl Malone and John Stockton famously lost to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in each of those NBA Finals trips.
The team won over 1,200 combined regular-season and postseason games with Sloan at the helm.