When Brooklyn-born, Irish Catholic Frank Layden strapped a struggling National Basketball Association franchise on his back and carried it from New Orleans to Utah in the summer of 1979, he set the team down in its new home in the Salt Palace, turned on the lights, and started telling one-liners.

Two things most outsiders, fans and admirers of all kinds of the former Jazz coach and team president, failed to realize and understand about Utah’s funny man: 1) He was three-fourths serious for every one-fourth humorous, and 2) Basketball wasn’t all that important to him. Living was.

Frank Layden, a Niagara graduate who became one of the Purple Eagles’ legendary coaches, and whose career catapulted him to working in the NBA and WNBA as a coach and as a general manager, has died at 93.

Frank Layden, known around Utah for his impact in the basketball community, has died at the age of 93. Layden passed away Wednesday, the Deseret News confirmed. ABC 4’s Wesley Ruff was the first to report the news.