Frank Layden smiles as he and his spouse, Barbara, are interviewed at their dwelling in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. Frank Layden talked about all issues sports activities and household. Scott G Winterton, Deseret Information
A signed photograph of Frank Layden and Irvin “Magic” Johnson hangs on the wall amongst quite a few different sports activities memorabilia on the dwelling of Frank and Barbara Layden in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. Scott G Winterton, Deseret Information
One of many largest causes the state of Utah has a franchise within the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation — one that's about to begin its forty third season in Salt Lake Metropolis when the Utah Jazz host the Denver Nuggets in Vivint Area on Oct. 19 — is stress-free in a leather-based recliner within the condominium he shares along with his spouse Barbara excessive above town he adopted 43 years in the past.
Frank Layden turned 90 this yr. “We’re getting previous, we are able to’t cease that,” says the person who, talking of issues you possibly can’t change, as soon as quipped, “You may’t coach top.”
He turns in his chair, appears to be like at Barbara and says, “She’ll all the time be 16 to me.”
He has an ailing again and makes use of a walker to get round, however the patter and the wit and the Brooklyn accent he imported with him to Utah haven’t misplaced a step. Frank, he sounds 16. Pull up a chair and put together to be entertained. Each paragraph a narrative. Each sentence a punch line.
The sort of patter that would promote coal to Newcastle — and professional basketball to a small-market school basketball city within the Nineteen Seventies.
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It’s onerous to conceptualize with Vivint Area full or largely full even when the crew sucks, chokes or tanks, with courtside seats going for $1,000-plus a sport and a ready listing to purchase them, with a franchise that bought for $1.6 billion two years in the past (and that was only for 80%), with downtown streets named for Stockton and Malone.
However it wasn’t all the time like this.
Forty-three seasons in the past, Sam Battistone, then the earnest however cash-strapped proprietor, introduced the crew to Salt Lake from New Orleans as a result of he was a devoted member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and since professional basketball was no match for Bourbon Road, and never in that order.
Within the 5 years the franchise was in New Orleans they by no means had a successful season. Their marquee participant was “Pistol” Pete Maravich who damage his knee and misplaced his mojo. Their most memorable entrance workplace transfer was buying and selling a first-round draft decide to Los Angeles for fading veteran guard Gail Goodrich — which is how Magic Johnson grew to become a Laker.
They left the Massive Straightforward in the summertime of 1979 for one of many smallest TV markets in all of professional sports activities, a spot the place school basketball (these have been the times of the Danny Ainge-led Cougars and the Danny Vranes-led Utes) owned the Utah sports activities scene greater than anytime earlier than or since.
It was into these circumstances that Battistone despatched his newly employed basic supervisor Francis Patrick Layden to persuade the natives that Jazz in Utah was a very good factor.
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No one mistook the cigar-smoking Irish-Catholic New Yorker for an area.
“One of many issues I heard after I got here right here was, ‘You received’t final two months once they get your act,” Frank remembers, “and I stated, ‘I’m going to do every little thing I can’ and I did.”
He was beneath no phantasm it was going to be simple. “I keep in mind answering the query when individuals requested, ‘What do you concentrate on getting the Jazz job?’ and I stated, ‘Effectively, the Lakers didn’t ask me.’ You don’t get good jobs, you get dangerous jobs, and also you gotta take advantage of them.
“One factor I by no means did, and I haven’t shared this with lots of people, is I by no means apprehensive about shedding my job. That’s No. 1. And I by no means apprehensive about how a lot cash I made.”
Via the sheer energy of character he made buddies and bought tickets. He gave speeches wherever and in all places, with a disarming self-deprecating humor. His weight was a favourite subject and goal. “I occur to have a completely lovely physique,” he would say, spinning his close to 300-pound body round for his viewers, “The one downside is that it’s inside this one.”
A yr into the Jazz experiment he added head coach to his GM title. By the fourth yr the Jazz have been within the playoffs for the primary time of their historical past and Frank was named NBA Coach of the Yr and Govt of the Yr, along with teaching the West crew within the 1984 All-Star Recreation and successful the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award — a single-season quadruple honor feat that may final no less than so long as Stockton’s help document.
The following yr, with Battistone out of cash and out-of-state patrons expressing curiosity, native Toyota vendor Larry H. Miller purchased the franchise.
Larry saved the Jazz from leaving Utah. Frank was why they have been nonetheless right here.
Layden stayed on as head coach till 1988, after which his No. 1 was the second to be retired by the franchise (Maravich’s 7 was the primary). He stayed on as GM and president till 1999.
Proof of the swath he lower through the Jazz’s first 20 years surrounds him within the rental he shares with Barbara. Behind him are work of Stockton and Malone, Jazz icons Layden calls “Ruth and Gehrig, you already know what I imply.”
He has tales for each piece of memorabilia — tales stuffed with Layden-esque element. Certainly one of them, about Malone, helps illustrate what Frank Layden meant and means to the Jazz household.
Right here’s Frank in his personal phrases:
“We had simply misplaced when what’s his identify (that may be Michael Jordan) made the robust shot (to beat the Jazz for the 1998 NBA championship). The next Saturday I’m in mattress and I get a cellphone name. ‘Hey coach, what are you doing, I would like you to see my new home.’
“I stated ‘Barbara dress, we’re going as much as Karl’s new home.’ So we stand up there and he reveals us the pool and the cigar place and the wine factor and one other place the place he has computer systems for his youngsters and all this stuff that’s fantastic. Once we’re accomplished and we’re leaving, I open the door and there’s a automobile on the market with an enormous bow on it. I stated, ‘What’s that?’ He stated, ‘Oh, I virtually forgot, completely happy Father’s Day.’”
After a beat, Frank provides, “It was a Toyota. And Barbara’s nonetheless driving it.”
As has been the case ever since they moved right here, Frank and Barbara are energetic locally. They indulge their lifelong love of theater. Frank goes to dozens of Bees baseball video games each summer time, the place he sings “Take Me Out to the Ball Recreation,” Harry Caray fashion, each time he’s requested — which is each time he’s there.
As for the Jazz? “We find yourself going to perhaps one sport a yr,” says Frank. “Someone will say, ‘Hey, do you need to go to dinner and a sport?’ In any other case we’ll watch it on TV.”
It appears the franchise could have moved on from a person whose identify is within the rafters, a person you’d assume could be paraded at heart court docket each sport. As a result of the reality is, Frank Layden wouldn’t be right here with out the Jazz, and the Jazz wouldn’t be right here with out Frank Layden.
A signed photograph of Frank Layden and Irvin “Magic” Johnson hangs on the wall amongst quite a few different sports activities memorabilia on the dwelling of Frank and Barbara Layden in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, Sept. 12, 2022.
Scott G Winterton, Deseret Information