Paul Jones

Paul Jones is the voice of the Raptors on the FAN 590 and writes regularly for Sportsnet.ca.

Jarret Jack played 21 minutes in the loss to Utah.

The Toronto Raptors are home following a 1-3 road trip thinking, "Oh, what could have been."

If Hedo Turkolu's last second shot falls against Phoenix and they don't have a brutal 5-for-21 fourth quarter against the Jazz where they missed 12 straight shots after slicing an 18-point deficit down to two points, maybe the record looks different.

But Toronto sits at 5-7, and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks they should be since the old adage says, "You are what your record says you are."

The key for Raptor fans is that the coaching staff and the players are seeing improvement. If this is true and not the perfunctory answer to questions asked of team personnel, then the Raptors will be fine once home games start to come with more regularity. We shall see.

I received a special treat yesterday in Utah when broadcast colleague and friend Jack Armstrong called to invite Eric Smith and me to lunch with former Jazz coach, Frank Layden -- who also happens to be a former head coach at Niagara University.

In case you've been living under a rock as a Raptors fan, you know Jack Armstrong is a former head coach at Niagara and at the time he took the job, the 26-year-old Armstrong was the youngest Division I head coach in the NCAA.

Niagara, by the way, is a university that has produced Basketball Hall of Famers Hubie Brown and Calvin Murphy. And if there is enough demand, I can chronicle all kinds of experiences when Niagara, Canisius, and St. Bonaventure known as the "Little 3" back in the 1970s. Are you old enough to remember names like Bob Lanier and Billy Kalbaugh?

But I digress.

Layden picks us up at the hotel and we head for lunch at a quaint little joint around the corner from the hotel, and it is the best lunch ever. As we get into the van and Jack does the introductions, the affable Layden calls me John Paul Jones, and I say to him that's the same thing he did back in the early 1970's when I was a grade school kid at a clinic put on by the Niagara Purple Eagles.

On that day he asked me what my name was after I not once, but twice, messed up a defensive drill he was trying to conduct. He didn't yell, as some coaches would have done, at the kid who was so skinny his basketball shirt was falling off his shoulders but rather asked me my name and proceeded to announce to all the other campers that "John Paul Jones" was going to run the drill. I was put in charge of the drill because I was having issues remembering left and right. He would say left and I would go right and the opposite also held true. Hey, no big deal thought Layden. I'll just put this scrawny little kid in front of the others and tell them to follow him. That way the drill would be easy for him and the others to follow.

The drill was not only run in front of all the other kids at the camp my age, but also the entire Niagara men's junior varsity team; because first year players could not play on the varsity squad. The crew included a prized Canadian recruit from Toronto who had just enrolled at the tiny school in the Falls, named George Rautins (yep, the older brother of senior men's national team coach, Leo Rautins). Thinking back, I was pretty nervous, but got through it and at the end of the camp I was presented with a practice jersey of what would turn out to be one of Niagara's great all time players, Marshall Wingate. Even though my wife keeps threatening to throw it out, I still have the jersey to this day.

Lunch was a potpourri of stories as Layden was at his best and had us laughing the entire time. He told us about everything from his Niagara days to moving with the pro team from New Orleans to Utah. He mentioned that he even tried to get John Havlicek and Wilt Chamberlain on the Jazz roster as they often hung out in Utah just after their respective careers had ended.

There were stories about encounters with Red Auerbach, Pistol Pete Maravich who played for him as a member of the Jazz and Layden even gave his opinion on LeBron's idea of basketball retiring the No. 23 to honour Michael Jordan. Oh yes, and there were a few Jordan stories as Layden was the president of the Utah Jazz when the team was beaten in the Finals in back to back seasons by Jordan's Bulls. His son Scott, now an assistant with Jerry Sloan, was the general manager of those Finals teams featuring Stockton and Malone before going to New York as GM and then returning to his current position.

With more jokes than I can remember one sticks out in my mind when I asked him about the ups and downs of coaching and losing a job being part of the business. Layden, holding up two fingers quipped, "When lose your job you need to have two things working for you," as I anxiously awaited the pearl of wisdom he hit all of us with the punch line. "First thing that's gotta work for you is the TV, the next that's gotta work for you is your wife."

It was a great afternoon and some amazing perspective from a man who has been in basketball for decades. Oh yes, later that night after the game, Layden stopped by the locker room to see another one of his campers and an alum of the "Purple Eagle Basketball School". The kid was from Niagara Falls, but is now head coach of an NBA team, Jay Triano.

Before the team boarded the overnight "red-eye" flight back to Toronto they were out for dinner at a restaurant. I'm usually good at not telling tales out of school but, we at the broadcast table and the rest of the patrons at the Salt Lake City establishment, were surprised when DeMar DeRozan as part of his rookie initiation busted out a loud rendition of Happy Birthday. November 19 is Marcus Banks birthday and DeRozan had to get up and sing.

OK, if you were disturbed by the Raptors performance, it was nothing like the sign that was seen going through the security check getting on to the airplane.

The birthday boy, Banks, and Antoine Wright look up at a sign in the building where we are clearing security and it reads: 'Number of days since the last accident' and is accompanied by a red digital number sign that is normally reserved for service at a crowded bakery. It has the number 31 boldly displayed, at which point Wright and Banks laughing ask one of the guys doing the screening, "What the heck does that mean, and if it has anything to do with our plane, I ain't getting' on?"

It may have been because everyone was tired and giddy, but it was a pretty funny exchange. It turns out that it is a workplace safety counter for people that are employed in that particular building and according to the guy who answered the question, they are on a pretty good roll.

With the Raptors returning home, hopefully they can get on their own roll and collect some wins.