The NBA / Chris Baker : Layden Has a Fat Chance to Keep It Off

“It’s tough to be fit as a fiddle when you’re shaped like a cello.”

--Frank Layden, Utah Jazz Coach

Frank Layden, the coach and general manager of the the Utah Jazz, spent a month at a fat farm in Santa Monica last summer.

Layden said he weighed 305 pounds when he checked into the fat farm last September. He says he has lost 57 pounds in the nine weeks since he began the program.

How did he know it was time to lose weight?

“I was standing on a corner wearing a blue suit and a yellow hat and three people pulled over and dropped off film in my pocket,” Layden joked.

Layden is perhaps the funniest coach in the National Basketball Assn., but his weight was no laughing matter.

“When you’re heavy, people perceive you as having a sense or humor and doing funny things,” Layden said. “I’ve always felt that I’d be just as funny even if I wasn’t fat. Being overweight just gave me more material to work with.

“As much as I used to kid and joke about being overweight, I got real concerned. I’m in my 50s, and when you’re dangerously overweight you’ve got to be concerned about having a heart attack or stroke.”

Jazz officials urged Layden to lose weight and financed the trip to the weight reduction center. There, he was restricted to 1,500 calories a day and attended daily exercise classes.

“The program is a way of changing your life style toward the way you eat and exercise, and it works,” he said. “A lot of people there weren’t as lucky as I. There were people there who had had heart surgery and had diabetes and high cholesterol.

“I was a fairly healthy 300-pound person. It was a matter of losing the weight and getting on to a new life style.

“Now I walk around three miles every day. I also have a treadmill at my house.”

This isn’t the first time Layden has lost weight. He went on a crash diet eight years ago and slimmed down from 310 pounds to 270.

“I virtually stopped eating,” Layden said. “I starved myself. I call it the famous Gandhi diet. All I did was drink water and I ran a lot. The diet I’m on now is more balanced. It makes more sense. Hopefully, this time around I’ll keep the weight off.

“I’m using the clothes I used when I was skinny before.”

Layden isn’t the NBA’s only other former heavyweight coach.

Milwaukee’s Don Nelson, who weighed 272 at the end of last season, also went on a diet last summer, losing 65 pounds.

Nelson’s diet was actually part of a fund-raising campaign to help Wisconsin farmers--Nellie’s Farm Fund. People were asked to pledge money for each pound he lost.

A total of $450,000 has been raised. Pledges from Nelson’s diet totaled almost $100,000. He also raised $230,000 by driving a tractor 230 miles around Wisconsin. Other events included a statewide telethon and an exhibition game.

Nelson conducted a weigh-in during during halftime of an exhibition game at the Milwaukee Arena. Nelson dropped his pants--he was wearing a wild pair of swimming trunks--for the weigh-in.

Tim Kempton, the Clippers’ rookie center from Notre Dame, is the lowest draft choice to make the roster of an NBA team this season.

Kempton, a sixth-round pick, was the 124th player selected. A total of 162 were chosen in the seven rounds of the NBA draft last June. Forty-eight rookies were on opening-game rosters in the NBA this season.

Boston didn’t have any rookies on its opening-game roster for the first time since 1953, but the Celtics have since signed rookie guard Andre Turner, who was cut earlier by the Lakers.

John Williams, the former Crenshaw High star who was selected in the first round by the Washington Bullets from LSU, is the youngest player in the NBA this season. He turned 20 last month.

Julius Erving, making his last appearance at the Sports Arena before his retirement at the end of this season, almost didn’t make it to last Sunday’s game against the Clippers.

Erving and his Philadelphia 76er teammates got stuck in traffic after the football game between the Raiders and Cleveland Browns at the Coliseum.

Most teams take a bus from their hotel to the arena, but the 76ers took cars. They had only two players at the arena 45 minutes before the game, but Erving and his teammates finally arrived at 6:20 p.m. The game started at 7 p.m.

A crowd was waiting outside the locker room for Erving, and he was mobbed when he arrived, but he didn’t have time to sign autographs.

Erving accommodated the fans after the game, before he stepped into his car, which was driven to the locker room door inside the arena.

Actor Jack Nicholson, who has Clipper season tickets, also attended the Clipper-76er game, missing one between the Lakers and Sacramento. Nicholson sat in a courtside seat next to the Philadelphia bench.

During the Clippers’ game against the 76ers, a fan at the Sports Arena held up a sign that said: “Fire the owner.”

Clipper owner Donald T. Sterling probably didn’t see it, however, because he was seated in front of the fan with the sign.

Fred Roberts, acquired by the Boston Celtics from the Utah Jazz last summer, has made quite a hit in Boston with his crew cut and beard. Fans have taken to calling him the POW.

Said Tom Heinsohn at the Celtics’ tipoff banquet: “I was interested to see Fred Roberts show up with that beard. I understand in the Mormon faith, that’s a sign you’re looking for a fifth wife.”

Added teammate Bill Walton: “I’d like to thank Red (Auerbach) and K.C. (Jones) for bringing Fred onto the team because he let me off the hook for having the worst beard and haircut in town.”

A crowd of 1,300 attended the banquet. Larry Bird asked Walton, a former Clipper, if the Clippers had ever had that large a turnout for a team event.

Quipped Walton: “Yeah, if they were holding a creditors’ meeting.”