Sides can't explain falling out

How can someone who played so well a season ago have his game go the way of a magician's hare the next season? How can someone go from having a new long-term contract to, poof, gone in just more than six months?

Even those who pulled the trigger on Friday's trade that sent former starting point guard Carlos Arroyo to Detroit cannot finger an appropriate reply to those silly-rabbit riddles.

"I don't have an answer for that," Jazz basketball operations senior vice president Kevin O'Connor said after acquiring a lottery-protected 2006 first-round draft choice and likely-to-be-waived center Elden Campbell from the Pistons.

"I don't how to explain it — as to why those things happen," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan added with regard to what he perceived to be a stunning reversal. "But they do."

Most perplexed by the disappearing act from Utah, though, may be Arroyo himself.

"I still don't know what happened," he told ESPN.com after the trade. "It's very difficult to understand. In training camp, he (Sloan) was so supportive. He said great things about me. All of the sudden he changed his mind."

Sloan did gush over Arroyo in the preseason.

Friday the Jazz tried to spin it that Arroyo's on-court performance since then is the only reason he is gone. Large as that role might have been, however, reality suggests more was in play.

Even beyond a much-chronicled sideline flap between Arroyo and Sloan during a Dec. 14 game against the Los Angeles Clippers — Arroyo gestured from the floor, Sloan pulled him and the two exchanged words — trouble may have been brewing.

According to ESPN's Chad Ford, "The Jazz claim Arroyo swore at Sloan during a game more than a month ago. Sloan confronted him after the game and made it clear Arroyo needed to change his game . . . Sloan wanted Arroyo to distribute more, shoot less and fix the attitude . . . When Arroyo had another in-game blowup with Sloan, the relationship deteriorated."

Sloan, known to use salty language a time or two himself, says he did not make the trade decision alone. The Jazz say it was organizational, from ownership and management down to input from assistant coaches.

But there is no mistaking who had final say on the call.

"I know the ultimate decision comes down to me. Which is fine," Sloan said. "I don't have a problem with that."

What Sloan and the Jazz did find problematic was Arroyo's play, and, it seems, his attitude as well.

The Jazz coach publicly chided Arroyo for his poor defense. Others in the organization questioned what they perceived to be selfish play on the offensive end for the past several weeks. Sloan even dropped hints, albeit without naming Arroyo, about certain teammates unwilling to pass to certain others.

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