SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Longtime Utah Jazz coach, general manager and franchise legend Frank Layden has passed away. He was 93 years old.
Layden became the Jazz coach two years after the franchise moved from New Orleans to Salt Lake City. He coached from the 1981 to 1988 seasons. He was hired in 1979 as the general manager, and maintained those duties while coaching.
He was named the NBA Coach of the Year in 1984 after Utah went 45-37, marking the franchise’s first winning season.
MORE | Jazz Legend Frank Layden:
During the same season he was also named the NBA Executive of the Year.
Layden had a 277-294 record with the Jazz. He also coached one season for the WNBA’s Utah Starzz – one of the league’s eight original teams.
Both John Stockton and Karl Malone were drafted during Layden’s tenure.
2023 Interview w/ Frank Layden:
KUTV spoke to Layden and his wife, Barbara in 2023 before the city hosted its second NBA All-Star Game.
He said he never thought the team would last in Salt Lake.
“When I think back at that, when we came here, I thought it was a very poor decision on the part of (original owner) Sam Battistone and the NBA to move an NBA team into a city this size who had just lost an NBA team who had won the championship,” he said. “So, I thought, give us three years, we’ll be out of here.”
Layden said the welcome the team received from the fans made the difference.
“They never had to promote the game anywhere else, which is, if you do it in New York, everybody, there’s just enough people there. The money flows out somewhere,” he said. “But we had to go out and sell it, that the game was actually going to be here, and that it was a big event. And it turned out it was, it was probably the biggest sporting event that we had had up till that time.”
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