Utah Jazz: Mr. Consistent — As Jazz evolve and change, Sloan remains Utah's rock

Williams — an Olympic teammate with Boozer on Team USA's 2008 gold medal-winning club in China, 12 years after Stockton and Malone teamed in Atlanta to win Olympic gold together for a second time — feels similarly.

"What he has done in his career is because of him and the coach he is," Williams said. "I'm definitely happy for him and proud to play for a coach of that caliber and somebody that's going to be in the hall of fame. I'm just lucky I get to learn from a guy like that."

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It wasn't always like that, however.

Williams butted heads with Sloan during his rookie season out of the University of Illinois, a year in which he had to prove his worth to earn not only an eventual starting job but also his coach's full respect.

It didn't take Williams long to do just that, but the times were trying nonetheless as he strode a road that many preceding him have had to navigate as well.

"He doesn't like rookies," Williams said. "That took getting used to for me."

True or not, what is accurate is that Sloan does not like those who do not constantly deliver the ditch-digging attitude he not only expects but demands.

Once Williams — or anyone else — figures that out, more than half the battle of just what it takes to play for Sloan has been won.

"Coach gets on everybody, no matter who they are," Williams said.

"After my rookie year," he added, "I was fine. And I've liked him ever since."

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For Sloan, though, it's never really been about being liked.

"My job is to win," he said.

Also centric to his life's work since he transitioned from NBA player to coach has been pursuing the sometimes elusive, other times quite-gratifying satisfaction of knowing he's gotten every ounce out of every player he could.

And it's no more different in his 21st season with the Jazz than it was in his first.

"I'd go to sleep every night and sleep like a log if I knew we were going to have great effort," Sloan said. "But sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night and guys won't run the floor, they won't guard their guy.

"That's when you're looking to jump off a tall building."

The yearning for full compliance is compounded when the team is as good as Sloan suspects this one can be.

On one hand, Sloan said this shortly after training camp opened late last month in Boise: "I think I know who this team is. And, in all fairness, they have a lot of work to do."