Jazz's Brown happy to return to Utah

The newest Jazzman, Devin Brown, says he's had the opportunity to see a lot of basketball the last several years as a member of the NBA-champion San Antonio Spurs.

"It looks like a lot of fun out there," Brown said, making a little light of the circumstances that have brought him somewhat full-circle, back to the state in which he was born and where his grandparents still live (in Roy).

He didn't really want to leave his hometown team — he's been in San Antonio since he was 7 months old — as a restricted free agent, but the Spurs have always been loaded at shooting guard and just signed Dallas' Michael Finley, adding to a rotation that already has Manu Ginobili, Bruce Bowen and Brent Barry.

The Spurs chose not to match Utah's offer sheet of two weeks ago.

So Utah it is, and Brown is so eager to get a chance to play, probably in the Raja Bell rotation with Gordan Giricek, and so eager to prove to all the world that his back (herniated disk, March 21) is healed that he will be back in Salt Lake City by next week to begin workouts and reacquaint himself with the rare air.

Brown met the Utah media Wednesday in the Zion's Bank Basketball Center where he will practice — and had already taken a few shots prior to his press conference.

Accompanying him were his agent, Derrick Powell, his mother, Ann Brown, and his grandparents, Lee and Dee Florence.

"We're so tickled we can hardly stand up," said Grandma Dee that Devin has become a member of the Utah Jazz, signing a two-year contract earlier Wednesday following passing a Jazz physical. "We're doubly pleased that Ann is going to move here.

"It's awful to be here in Jazz World rooting for San Antonio," Dee Florence said.

Brown's mother, Ann, was working at Hill Air Force Base as an accountant when she had Devin.

Trying to be the good young mom, she asked husband James, a hair stylist, if he'd mind moving south seven months later. She was homesick for her family in Baton Rouge, La. (they all made it through Hurricane Katrina in good shape, with only some downed trees to worry about), and she was worried about baby Devin being able to go outside and play in the cold and snow.

"Yeah, isn't that ironic?" Ann Brown said about her 26-year-old son now moving back to Utah, snow and all, to get more chance to play.