Jerry Zgoda's Sunday Insider: Corbin is latest Wolf to rise

Tyrone Corbin spent 23 NBA seasons as a player, front-office executive and assistant coach preparing for this moment.

And yet, none of it could fully prepare him for this.

Like former Timberwolves teammates Sam Mitchell, Scott Brooks and Sidney Lowe before him, Corbin has ascended from a playing career that beat the odds to become an NBA head coach.

His time came last month, when Jerry Sloan abruptly walked away as Utah's coach after 23 seasons on the job and Corbin stepped forth after seven seasons as Sloan's assistant.

Just days later, the Jazz traded All-Star point guard Deron Williams.

Corbin was asked if he ever could have imagined three or six months ago such change to a franchise that was among the league's most stable.

"I wouldn't have the day before it happened," he said. "Things were going along pretty good. We lost a few games. We weren't playing as well as we could have, but you go through spurts like that during the course of a year. Fortunate or unfortunate, Coach [Sloan] decided to do something different and I was there.

"They felt comfortable enough in me to give me an opportunity to do it. I'm happy to be here."

In one moment, he replaced the most tenured coach in professional sports.

In almost the next, he lost a transformational point guard in a preemptive strike of a trade that sent Williams to New Jersey for Derrick Favors, Devin Harris and two first-round picks.

Strange how quickly things can change ...

Torn apart and thrust back together by a coaching change and monumental trade and beset by a rash of injuries, the Jazz has struggled. Utah is 5-10 since Sloan retired and now is chasing Memphis for the Western Conference's final playoff spot.

"It's been difficult, it's been difficult for everyone involved," Corbin said. "But the games are still going on. We're all professional. We're paid to play. We're paid to coach, so we got to figure it out and figure it out on the run. We can't feel sorry for ourselves. I can't feel sorry for myself. I can't allow the players to feel sorry for themselves because we made changes in the middle of the run here.

"It's difficult, I understand. It's emotional, I understand that, too. But we got to play."

It's no easy path. Neither was Corbin's journey through the NBA, from second-round pick by San Antonio in 1985 to an expansion draft selection by the Wolves in 1989.

In all, he played for nine different teams in 15 seasons. He played alongside Mitchell, Lowe and Brooks, among many others, for 2 1/2 seasons in Minnesota before he was traded to Utah for Thurl Bailey.

The Wolves won 51 games in those first two seasons under coach Bill Musselman. Scott Roth, Doug West and Tod Murphy from those teams also went on to coaching careers in the NBA or college.

"We were all guys who knew the game, who had to work for everything we got in the league, who understood the game and had to fill a lot of different roles on different teams," Corbin said. "It prepared all of us. Muss did good."