When the Goodman League competes against the Indy Pro-Am on Sept. 24,  Celtics draft pick JaJuan Johnson will reportedly suit up for the Indy Pro-Am squad. He will compete against Jeff Green, who could potentially be Johnson’s teammate whenever the NBA returns.

John Wall, Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley and DeMarcus Cousins have all committed to join Green in representation of the Goodman League, according to separate reports by Mike Wells and Michael Lee. Johnson’s Indy Pro-Am team will reportedly also include Zach Randolph, Mike Conley, Eric Gordon, George Hill, Lance Stephenson and Gordon Hayward.

Note: I am about to ramble about Gordon Hayward for a short period of time, just because his name triggered some great NBA League Pass memories. Bear with me.

On April 5, 2011, Hayward put on one of last season’s least-expected shows, metaphorically staring Kobe Bryant straight in the eyes until Kobe blinked.

Two nights before, Hayward had established a career high of 19 points against the Sacramento Kings, but nothing about his bland rookie season signaled that Hayward was ready to build on the career night, especially not against the Los Angeles Lakers. The Jazz had played the Lakers earlier in the week and Hayward was both inefficient and  unproductive. He finished the game with 7 points on 3-9 shooting, playing 29 minutes and barely putting his fingerprints on the game. The Jazz lost after leading by 17 points and Hayward scored only two points in the second half, an alley-oop from Earl Watson after the game was already out of reach.

The Lakers were on a typical tear, winning 17 of their past 19 games, and the Jazz were somewhere between listless and helpless, losers of eight straight, a franchise in shambles after Jerry Sloan’s retirement and Deron Williams’s trade, a franchise watching idly as the memories of two great decades burned slowly to the ground. Al Jefferson was acquired in the offseason, but he and Paul Millsap did not mesh in the front-court. Derrick Favors came to Utah as part of the Williams trade, and he could provide occasional entertainment with a fierce dunk or a high-flying block, but his prime was years away at best. Tyrone Corbin tried to fill Sloan’s enormous shoes, but Utah’s talent was lower than it had been in years and Corbin, well, Corbin was not Sloan. Meanwhile, the Jazz’s lottery draft choice, the league’s next white hope, Gordon Hayward blended into the background, struggling to deal with the strength and quickness of his NBA opponents.

Kobe Bryant is not normally the right prescription for a rookie struggling to find his NBA calling. But the second time Hayward played Kobe that week, he transformed into something different, something better, the player Utah hoped he would be, a player his parents and friends could be proud of, a player who dueled against Kobe Bryant and scored 22 points, including 10 in the final quarter, grabbed 6 rebounds, dished 5 assists, drilled the game-winning free throw, forced Bryant into a turnover on the game’s final possession, and walked off the court with at least one new fan.

“I’m very, very fond of him. He’s a very-skilled, all-around player,” said Kobe Bryant. “I think he’s going to have a very bright future in this league. He reminds me of a more talented Jeff Hornacek. Jeff couldn’t put the ball on the floor as well as (Hayward) can.”

Less than two weeks later, the Jazz ended their season by beating the Denver Nuggers. Hayward pumped in 34 points.

The Utah Jazz had been in disarray, losing their Hall of Fame coach, their All-Star point guard, and six of their past seven games. They had just lost a game to the Pistons, 120-116, which means that — yes — the Jazz actually allowed 120 points to the Pistons, a lowly team playing without half its best players. The Jazz, I’m telling you, had sucked lately. So, obviously, they and Celtics played one of the most fun contests you’ll see this season.

Al Jefferson dominated the paint, and Derrick Favors showed why every team willing to trade a superstar was linked to Favors. Devin Harris flashed Derrick Rose-ian speed, and reminded fans why he was an All-Star only two seasons ago. It was strange looking to Utah’s sideline and seeing somebody who wasn’t Jerry Sloan, but Tyrone Corbin’s team played hard. They played with a purpose, and the home crowd roared in support.

But the Jazz could not defeat the Boston Celtics, not even with so much effort, not even on a night when Utah controlled the three-second key. The Celtics made all the necessary plays in the fourth quarter to hold Utah at bay. Ray Allen drained a number of jumpers deserving of the Sam Cassell dance (expected), and Rajon Rondo — God bless his normally-broken jump shot — drained a free throw-line jumper to seal the deal (not expected). Paul Pierce scored 21 points on ten shots, including a clutch three-pointer of his own, and Kevin Garnett double-doubled for the fifth straight game (yeah, that’s impressive). Avery Bradley took six shots in six minutes, even making two of them, and Rajon Rondo was fantastically aggressive (despite passing up a couple open layups in favor of passing the ball).

The two newest Celtics also played, and the result was an admittedly mixed bag. Nenad Krstic began the game like a Serbian version of Wilt Chamberlain, and I’m clearly using quite a bit of hyperbole. But Krstic looked, at the very least, like a huge step up offensively from Kendrick Perkins. He sprinted the floor, showed his nice outside shooting form, caught an alley-oop from Rajon Rondo, poured in 10 first-quarter points, and never once brought the ball to his ankles after catching a pass in the paint (sorry, Perk). But, alas, there are downfalls to Nenad Krstic. Such as this: Al Jefferson scored 28 points and added 19 rebounds, while Paul Millsap scored 17 points of his own. Boston’s interior defense certainly did not invoke thoughts of Bill Russell.

But Jeff Green did, if only for one flying block in transition. Barring that one highlight block, Green’s game was up and down. He hit a tough shot from the wing and finished a nice putback layup, but also missed an outside jumper so badly I feared for the backboard’s life. Still, Green again showed the versatility that should make him quite valuable off Boston’s bench, even if his offensive game continues to be less efficient than I would like.

I’m not sure whether Doc Rivers considers Green an exciting new toy or whether he simply wants to figure out how to maximize Green’s talents, but Doc has put Green into some truly funky lineups. Tonight’s funkiest one featured Green — who primarily played power forward in Oklahoma City and might naturally be a small forward — at shooting guard. The lineup consisted of Rondo-Green-Pierce-Davis-Krstic, or, in other words, a lineup I definitely never thought I’d see playing for the Boston Celtics. The lineup did not play long, but Doc Rivers can tinker with Green to mix and match some intriguing (and strange) lineups.

Other things happened, of course. And I’ll discuss more tomorrow. But tonight, just thank the basketball gods for such an entertaining game, and for allowing Ray Allen to age so gracefully. And for the opportunity to watch Al Jefferson’s post game at its finest, because Jefferson’s post game looks a lot like art and sounds a lot like Mozart.

I should be focused on Celtics-Lakers tonight, or at least Ray Allen’s quest for history. Instead, I just can’t stop thinking about Jerry Sloan.

He never quite won an NBA championship, and never could garner the votes to earn a Coach of the Year Award. But let’s not make this about what Jerry Sloan wasn’t, or what Jerry Sloan couldn’t achieve. Because Sloan was the last old-school coach standing, the last respect-driven teacher who would whip a player’s ass for not following instructions. He was the NBA’s answer to Norman Dale — and if there’s a better coach to be compared to than Hickory High’s sergeant, I haven’t heard of him.

Over his 23 years as Utah’s head coach, Sloan became synonymous with pick-and-rolls and the flex offense. His name will rarely be mentioned without also mentioning Karl Malone and John Stockton, yet Sloan made his own name during the Stockton-Malone era, and even afterward. He coached 23 years in Utah, yet his teams had only one losing record. He once coaxed 42 wins out of a team that started Carlos Arroyo at point guard, DeShawn Stevenson/Gordan Giricek at shooting guard, Andrei Kirilenko at small forward, Tom Gugliotta/Michael Ruffin at power forward, and Greg Ostertag/Jarron Collins at center. In other words, he manufactured wins out of five donkeys. This wasn’t a man who rode the lapels of John Stockton and Karl Malone to great heights. This was a man who needed hardly any talent to compete.

And yet here we are, in February of 2011, and Sloan’s gone. One too many spats with team star Deron Williams, according to numerous reports. Sloan was losing the team, according to others. If so, that represents a sad state in the current Utah Jazz franchise. If you can’t respect Jerry Sloan, a man of virtues, values and morals carved from another era, who the hell are you going to respect?

I hate to bring Hoosiers up for a second time, but Sloan really does remind me of Coach Norman Dale. I picture the town meeting from Hoosiers, when the town was busy running Coach Dale out of his head coaching position at Hickory High. Dale had instituted a four-pass rule, and everyone in town hated it. Rather than shooting jumpers during practice, his players ran in and around chairs for conditioning. Rather than scrimmage, they worked on the chest pass. Rather than sit back in a soft zone, he made them play a tenacious man-to-man. Rather than play with a player who would not accept his way, Coach Dale sent only four players on the floor.

Coach Dale’s players were struggling to accept his new rules, his strict attention to detail, his unwillingness to let them slide. And so the town wanted him out. Except Jimmy Chitwood — good ole Jimmy Chitwood, the golden boy with the perfect jumper, the only person in town with the power to keep Coach Dale as head coach — spoke up.

“I don’t know if it will make any change,” Chitwood said, “but I figure it’s about time for me to start playing ball.”

A man in the crowd shouted, “I told you!” Then he pointed at Coach Dale: “Once we got rid of him.”

But Chitwood wasn’t done speaking. “But, there’s just one thing,” he continued. “I play, Coach stays. He goes, I go.”

The town vote had already been taken, and, by virtue of a 68-45 vote in favor of firing Coach Dale, Coach Dale should have been on his way out. But Chitwood’s nod of approval was enough to call for a re-vote, and Coach Dale’s job was saved. Coach Dale’s strict regime may not have fit the rest of the town, but Chitwood saw his integrity. Chitwood saw that he did things the right way. Chitwood saw that no other man would do as good a job molding the Hickory High team.

I wish Deron Williams had stepped to the podium today to back Sloan. I know why it didn’t happen; I know that bridge has already been burned. But Williams, and anyone else who fight with Sloan, fail to realize that the discipline and values he instills will make them better players. Better people, even. And so Sloan will leave today, pushed away from basketball by a team that no longer recognizes his importance, by players who no longer understand his strict ways.

Here I am, with Celtics-Lakers tonight, foregoing a game preview so I can give a legend some sort of due. My words won’t be enough to encapsulate his time in Utah. They won’t be enough to explain what he has meant to the Utah Jazz, to the NBA. But I just want to let it be known: There are plenty of people who understand the importance of each hard flex cut, the importance of everything Sloan stands for.

No coach will ever replicate Jerry Sloan’s career in the future. He’s truly the last of a dying breed. But we were lucky enough to have him in the game for this long. The Utah Jazz will never be the same again, I know that. But Sloan’s going out the way he came in, unwilling to sacrifice his morals for anything, and I doubt he’d want it any other way.

If Blake Griffin keeps making ridiculous highlights every game, I might have to rename this the Griffin Reel of the Day. He outdoes himself every night. For the first time since Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson tapped their heads after every big play, the Clippers have hope. Of course, it’s the Clippers. Griffin won’t last until November before needing microfacture surgery.

After the jump, Rajon Rondo’s over-the-head pass creates “a new gender of passing… yeah!” Read more »

I cringe every time he shoots a jumper, but Brewer is a solid player.

Ronnie Brewer is the latest name mentioned as a potential Celtic. (Sports Illustrated)