MEMPHIS — After falling Saturday to the Jazz, the Memphis Grizzlies have lost eight straight — the longest active streak in the NBA, and most by Memphis since they dropped the first 13 games of the 2002-03 season.

The Grizzlies also have lost 14 of their last 15 games, and they are just 1-12 since trading franchise cornerstone Pau Gasol to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, however, hopes the franchise has the sense and patience to stick with first-year coach Marc Iavaroni, the ex-Utah forward whose staff includes longtime Jazz assistant Gordie Chiesa.

"I hope things go well for him," Sloan said of Iavaroni, who played four seasons for the Jazz in the mid-to-late 1980s.

"You deserve an opportunity to have a chance to succeed, and that doesn't always happen," Sloan added. "Coaches, you know, are the most expendable guy. But it should be the other way around. That's what (retired Jazz coach) Frank Layden always said: 'Players should be expendable.' And I always believed that after I heard him. ... Because if a player knows you're expendable, you've got no chance — unless you have the greatest talent in the world."

Time, Sloan suggested, is critical to rebuilding a struggling franchise like the Grizzlies.

"That's the biggest thing with any franchise — the ability to be able to stick with people, and say, 'OK, this is the way it's gonna be,' " he said.

"They haven't been together very long. Their coaching style hasn't been there. People haven't had a chance to experience that," Sloan added. "Some coaches, it takes two or three years to find out who guys are. People say, 'Well, you should know.' But you don't know what they're gonna do in a certain situation. You don't know how they're gonna react to good, bad and all the other stuff that comes along."

Such is especially the case after the trade of a franchise player like Gasol.

"To me," Sloan said, "that's devastating — because you lose a player of that caliber, how do you get him back?"

Iavaroni, for his part, is preaching patience too.

"I told (Memphis players) that Utah wasn't always great," the Grizzlies coach said. "They struggled a couple years ago and didn't make the playoffs. People tend to forget that."

HEY 'BRO: Jazz backup center Jarron Collins played his first game against his twin brother since Jason Collins was traded earlier this season from New Jersey to Memphis.

Jason, as it turns out, is living at the same Memphis hotel in which the Jazz stayed. Moreover, his room is on the same floor that Jazz players were on Friday night.