Poor play prompts Miller to move seats

The Utah Jazz had just missed four shots in a row while Golden State was running in layups at the other end of the court.

During a timeout after a Jason Richardson reverse layin gave the Warriors a 19-point lead Friday night in the Delta Center, Jazz owner Larry H. Miller made a diagonal beeline from his courtside seat to his team's bench to listen to the huddle and stare at his club.

Miller never said anything, but from that point on — the final 18 minutes of the game — he planted himself at the end of the bench, standing at the top of the tunnel nearly as ramrod still as the statue he dedicated on the Delta Center plaza Wednesday to John Stockton — except a scowl was frozen on Miller's face as the listless Jazz were thrashed 108-91 by the Warriors.

Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said he used to think he'd be bothered by such behavior from the owner, but now, he almost welcomes it.

"I've appreciated that more probably than I thought I would when I first took the job," said Sloan, "because he sees what we have to deal with, the circumstances we're trying to deal with.

"My job is never secure, I understand that. He has the right to ask or do anything he wants to do. It's his team. He doesn't work for me, and I've always known that," said the man who won't lose his job until he resigns, if Miller's many statements on that subject are true. Sloan is completing his 17th season as Jazz head man.

"I think he always has a reason to be upset if the team doesn't win," Sloan added. "It's his business, and he's a very competitive person. Always has been. And I've never had a problem with that."

Neither, really, did several of the Jazz players, who knew they'd embarrassed themselves, the coach, the owner and the fans on this night, especially after a nice start.

"I can't blame him for being upset and doing that," said center Ben Handlogten, who celebrated his recent new contract to the end of the season with the first double-double of his career — 12 points, 11 rebounds, all of them meaningless to him in such a bad game. "It's a home game, and we let a team go on a run we let them go on — he should be upset with his team," Handlogten said.

Several players, including Handlogten, said Miller's standing over them like a math teacher watching high school kids take a final exam didn't affect them during the game. It doesn't personally do anything to me because I'm on the floor doing the best I can do," he said.