I wish I could have seen Pete

I've seen a lotin the 25 years the Jazz have been in Utah.

I saw two of the greatest players in history, for 18 seasons, mastering the pick-and-roll. I saw the NBA Finals here twice.

I saw the great opponents as they stormed through on their road trips: Magic, Bird, Hakeem, the Admiral, Kobe, Shaq. I saw MJ the night he scored 38 in a Finals game, fighting a 102-degree fever.

I saw Isiah Thomas writhing on the court after being struck in the eye by Karl Malone.

I saw a rainbow-shooting Darrell Griffith, a self-absorbed Adrian Dantley, a begoggled Thurl Bailey, a towering Mark Eaton, a dead-eyed Jeff Hornacek. I saw Jerry Sloan angrily banishing Greg Ostertag and Chris Morris to the locker room. I saw Bobbye Sloan, strong and unbowed in the closing weeks of her life.

I saw the somber crowd the night it was announced Magic Johnson was HIV-positive. I was there the night John Stockton returned from knee surgery to an ovation that lasted for minutes.

I saw the move from the dimly lit Salt Palace to the high-gloss Delta Center.

I saw an All-Star game to remember — an overtime, in which the hometown heroes were named co-MVP's.

I saw Karl Malone weep as he and thousands of fans said farewell to Stockton.

But the thing I didn't see was Pistol Pete Maravich.

Long before he died of a heart ailment in a pickup game in 1988, he was gone from Utah. I'd like to believe his ghost haunts the Utah court where he once played, throwing behind-the-back passes in the moonlight. But that would be untrue. The Salt Palace arena is gone. Beyond that, Maravich only played in 17 games in that first Jazz season in Salt Lake, before being waived.

He never truly was a member of Utah's Jazz.

"He was only a shadow here," says Tom Nissalke, the first Jazz coach in Utah.

His number hangs in the Delta Center rafters, but that's only because he was a star with the franchise, not a star in Salt Lake. By the time the team moved from New Orleans, fast living and a rebellious knee had taken their fee.

Pete never smiled much. Nissalke — who knew him from the time he was a college freshman — can't remember him smiling at all. Perhaps it was too many demons: a war with alcohol, a mother who committed suicide, a demanding, discipline-first father, who was also his college coach.