Tuesday marked the official announcement. Not that it left anyone suprised. Toronto Raports Coach Sam Mitchell, won in what basically a two-horse race his first Coach of the Year Award. Utah's Jerry Sloan finished second. Again.

This year Sloan led Utah to a 51-31 record, and it's first division title since 2000. The 51 wins was a ten win improvement from 2005-06, which was a 15 win improvement from 2004-05. Sam Mitchell led Toronto to 47 wins and the 4th best record seed in a very week Eastern Conference.

So no one picked Toronto to do much of anything. Why? Because they haven't in Sam Mitchell's previous two season, where he won 37% of his games, alienated Vince Carter (who claimed Mitchel tried to fight him in the locker room), and was believed to be in danger of losing his job had Brian Colangelo had a suitbable replacement available. So since the expectations were so low, having a winning basketball team suddenly looks alot better, so much so that 47 wins in the morebound Eastern Conference outdoes 51 wins in a conference with 6 of the leagues 7 best teams.

In his 19 years coaching the Jazz and 22 years coaching in the NBA, Sloan has never once won coach of the year. Although many other curius names have. Doc Rivers won one for leading his Magic to a 41-41 record and a first-round exit in the playoffs. Sloan won 55 games that year. Mike Dunleavy, Del Harris, Larry Bird are among the other winners during Sloan's tenure. Are they better coaches than Sloan. All Sloan has done with the Jazz is win 940 games, lead them to the playoffs in 16 of his 19 seasons and take them to the Finals twice. Mike Dunleavy has coached three different teams in that span, fired from two of them.

What makes Jerry Sloan so great has also kept him from winning the award. He epitomizes old-school. Basketball is simple to him. He doesn't believe he does anything special. He draws up plays (he remarkably calls every set play, even when John Stockton was his PG), expects his players to run them and then fight and compete as hard as they can to keep the other team from scoring. Simple right? But definitely not flashy, nor tremendously popular in small-market Salt Lake City.

Which has helped the new-millenium Jazz  find a new annual national media-tradition. Ever since losing to Portland in the Conference Finals in 1992, the Jazz were constantly counted out as a Western Conference contender, yet surpassed expectations by the end of the decade Jazz fans stopped listending to the "experts and Peter Vescey" because they knew they would be in the playoffs.

Now the media has found a new game to play, called the "Let's Make It Sound Like Sloan has been done an injustice, then continue to do an injustice to him." At first it was funny, now it's becoming repetitive. Every announcer or national media member who covers a Jazz game always says "how has Jerry Sloan never won coach of the year?," yet five minutes later will say "I think (Insert Name of any NBA Coach who's last name is not Sloan Here) deserves to win it." Guys like Marc Stein, Greg Anthony, John Hollinger, Mike Tirico and Mike Breen will use the "How has he never won it" ploy to give them material to talk/write about, but when it comes down to it, they are largely the reason that Sloan has never won it.

It's getting to the point that I hope Sloan never wins it. It would be much better to retire having been snubbed for 20+ years than to win it in your last year and have everyone forget about the previous 19 yrs of snubbage.

For a guy who is all work and no hype, it would be a fitting way to be remembered.