Jeff Hornacek's retirement isn't about going away; it's about coming home. As much as he enjoyed his accidental career as a professional basketball player, there were always the painful goodbyes, the hugs and kisses at the door and the endless long-distance calls.

"He still calls 15 times a day when he's on the road," his wife, Stacy, said a few weeks ago.

While trying to watch her kids' little league games, Stacy would field calls "every five minutes" on her cell phone — Jeff, in some far-away NBA city, wanting the play-by-play and score. A few years ago, Stacy made a pillow case for Jeff to take on road trips. It is decorated with pictures of each of the children, along with their messages and drawings.

"That way he could sleep with them every night," says Stacy.

The retirement from basketball isn't about the bum knee and the 37 years, either; it's about being a dad. It's about a guy who, as every fan knows, says hello to his kids before every free throw — 1-2-3 wipes of his right cheek, one each for Tyler, Ryan and Abigale.

He always felt guilty about his frequent absences over the years, leaving Stacy a single mom during road trips. He did his best to compensate. He once instructed his kids over the phone, step-by-step, through the preparation of French toast and sausage so they could serve Mom breakfast in bed. He has been known to leave a pasta dish in the refrigerator that he prepared before he left town. He has done his own laundry after games so his wife could sleep (gentlemen, you could learn to hate this guy).

"I am blessed to have him," Stacy once said. "Sometimes I think he's too good to be true."

But there is only so much a father and husband can do from his room in the Marriott. So, he will retire from the spotlight to drive carpools and sit in the stands at soccer games and tend kids while Stacy pursues her own aspirations as a writer. It's her turn, he says. What seemed to bother him most about his career was that it demanded that his family bend their lives to his schedule.

So there he goes, off into retirement, one of the most beloved Jazz players of all time, a better fit in Utah than even his popular Hall of Fame teammates; a warmer, naturally gracious person who is so ordinary in many ways that he is extraordinary. As one fan observed recently on a talk radio show, "He's one of us. He's like a neighbor."

Universally admired

He is a player universally admired, both for his skill and his comportment. Gordon Chiesa, the Jazz assistant, captured Hornacek best when he said, "He has inner peace." He is a remarkably relaxed, comfortable, imperturbable man who was never changed by the NBA pitfalls of money and adulation. What a man does for a living is not important, he said. He is still the aw-shucks, family man from mid-America who married a farmer's daughter.