Twenty agonizing years this chase has lasted. Twenty years of trying to stay ahead of his inevitable dismissal as coach of the Utah Jazz, because everybody in the business gets fired and surely his time was coming soon.

Jerry Sloan has thought that all along, sweating out all but the last four or five years, with the sleepless nights to prove it. He finally grew more secure, for whatever reason, in a shift that left him only to stress about everything else that could go wrong.

"I don't know – I guess I quit worrying about it, quit thinking about it as much as I did," he said. "I worry about it, but I don't go to bed at night and wake up in the middle of the night. I wake up in the middle of the night over the players. Not about my job, like I used to."

That's the thing. The man who has come to symbolize that rarest of NBA commodities – stability on the sideline – never felt secure through winning the fourth-most games in league history, two Western Conference titles and seven division crowns.

He's a farm boy from downstate Illinois who lived without, a coach who still hasn't gotten over being fired by the Bulls in 1982 and might have died in the crash that killed all 29 people on the plane carrying the Evansville basketball team in 1977 had he not unexpectedly quit as coach five days before.

So, yeah, 20 years with the same team.

Good luck having that mean something.

"Every day," said Sloan, 66. "I expect to get fired every day. I don't think that'll happen, especially now. But as far as the team's concerned, you're always concerned because you lose a game and you wonder how you're going to come out of it. You may not come back out of it like you expected. (Players) may quit on you. They may do this. They may do that. I've seen so many things like that happen, and it's really frightening."

Tuesday is the 20th anniversary of the day Frank Layden walked away from coaching for good, with Utah at 11-6 and bound for the playoffs. Sloan, a Jazz assistant, replaced Layden. Utah plays the Timberwolves in Minneapolis on the milestone night. There likely will be praise from around the league at the achievement that is unthinkable by today's standards, and the famously understated Sloan will do his best to avoid any spotlight and be glad for every instant that isn't about him.

"This is the same as a Cal Ripken-type, Lou Gehrig-type streak," said Scott Layden, Frank's son who once was the Utah general manager and now is a Sloan assistant.

The Jazz has perspective of the moment at the ready:

• Sloan, in his 21st season, is the longest-tenured coach with one team in the four major sports. Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves has completed 19, Jeff Fisher of the Tennessee Titans is in his 15th and Mike Shanahan of the Denver Broncos his 14th.

• The other 29 NBA franchises have made 222 coaching changes since Sloan got his promotion, topped by the Nuggets and Knicks with 12 each and the Lakers and Clippers with 11. The Kings have made seven, tied for the sixth most. Every club has made at least two, and three already have made changes this season.

• Sloan doesn't just have the most wins with one team (1,007). He has the most wins by a cushion of 212, over second-place Red Auerbach with the Celtics from 1950 to 1966. The closest among active coaches is Gregg Popovich of the Spurs with 642.

"It's just unbelievable for this day and time for a coach to stay with an organization for such a long time," said Trail Blazers coach Nate McMillan, who since Sloan took over in Salt Lake City has played 9 1/2 seasons with the SuperSonics and coached five seasons in Seattle and three-plus seasons in Portland. "I think it says something about the coach and the whole organization. It doesn't happen like that. Even though he's had success and he's been to the Finals, a lot of times it seems like organizations and coaches, they find a way to depart or move on and go a different direction."

Sloan has coached the veteran clubs of John Stockton-Karl Malone-Jeff Hornacek and the younger group that has turned into the current 12-8 squad that has fought injuries. He came up short in two Finals, though both against the Michael Jordan Bulls in an explanation that normally gets anyone off the hook, and was in the lottery three consecutive seasons before the turnaround led by Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer.

Never, though, has it been more than external speculation, or internal worry, that Sloan would be fired. Just the thought of it has been rare, let alone actual momentum to happen. He intended to retire in 2004, after cancer took his wife, Bobbye, but she wanted him to keep going, so he did.

He has thought about retiring most every summer since, annually remaining noncommittal about his future and saying during the season that it may be his last. He said it again a few days ago. This might be his last tour around the league before going to his McLeansboro, Ill., farm to stay. Or he might come back.

"I'm still here, yeah," Sloan said.

On the first step to the next 20 years.

That got a smile out of him.

"I don't know about 20 minutes," Jerry Sloan said as the chase resumed.

Call The Bee's Scott Howard-Cooper, (916) 321-1210.