Sloan to wear ESPN mic during Friday night's game against Spurs

Jazz coach Jerry Sloan may have to check himself before speaking Friday night when Utah visits San Antonio for a rematch of last season's NBA Western Conference Finals.

That game will be televised by ESPN (as well as locally by KJZZ), and that means Sloan will be among the NBA's first coaches to go through a game wearing a live microphone under a new league directive pertaining to ESPN and TNT double-header broadcasts.

Jazz spokesman Jonathan Rinehart said Sloan had been requested by the network to wear the mic Friday.

"Well, I never thought any of those things were a good decision," said Sloan at practice Thursday. "But that's not my decision, obviously, and I have to go by the rules and play by the rules and see what happens.

"What do you do about it? You just do it. That's the rules. It's like three seconds — what do you do about it? You get out of the lane," he added.

The NBA is requiring those coaches involved with games televised by either TNT or ESPN on Thursdays and Fridays to be wired for sound, though it will supposedly be carefully monitored, and they are required to do network interviews during selected timeouts, though the comments will be taped and presented later in the games.

Also, as the NBA — and other pro sports like baseball and football, who have already tried similar tactics — tries to draw more attention to its product, there will be remote-controlled cameras turned on in locker rooms before games and at halftime and postgame. The cameras are not supposed to focus on strategic things like a coach's dry-erase board.

Some players may also wear mics, but they have the option to say no. Coaches do not.

Tonight's TNT broadcasts of the Denver Nuggets-Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat-Portland Trailblazers are the first games eligible for the new all-access media. Friday's Chicago Bulls-Detroit Pistons and Jazz-Spurs matchups are the first for ESPN.

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