SALT LAKE CITY — Back when the Jazz were outliers in a league of established teams, Frank Layden and Mark Eaton took a chance and made Utah their home. It remains so nearly four decades later.
Their friendship is lasting as the granite cliffs of the Cottonwood canyons.
This week, Layden was presented the NBA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In typical self-deprecating style, he said his career reached “a high level of mediocrity” and concluded, “on behalf of all C students in the world, I’m going to take it anyway.”
Frank never needed a laugh track, but he can be equally serious and poignant.