Jazz to retire Dantley's No. 4

When Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller finally made the call to Adrian Dantley on Wednesday that many have been waiting for maybe 10 or 15 years or more, "There was kind of dead air," Miller said of the other end of the phone.

Dantley, once the Jazz's 6-foot-5 power forward and now an assistant coach for the Denver Nuggets, hardly knew how to immediately react to Miller's call about retiring Dantley's No. 4 jersey — a call that's seemed a no-brainer for a decade-plus but one it seemed might never come at all.

"At first, it was like it didn't compute with him. And then he said, 'Well, that would be nice,"' Miller said Thursday in his weekly radio interview segment on 1280 AM. "By the end of the conversation, it was really fun. Right at the end, he said, 'This is really good. Thank you. Thank you."'

The call that Dantley had so wanted to get for so many years — one that will likely help him enter the Basketball Hall of Fame because how can the Hall of Fame admit someone whose jersey isn't retired by the team with whom he spent the most time? — was finally in his ear, and it was sinking in.

"He was able to open up a little bit and show his appreciation," said Miller. "He didn't break up and get too emotional, but he was genuinely pleased, and that was good for me. He expressed a genuine 'thank you' for it, and I told him that we'd appreciated what he'd been to the franchise when he was here and so we'd be pleased to honor him that way."

On April 11, when the Nuggets visit EnergySolutions Arena, Dantley's No. 4 jersey will be hoisted to the rafters and finally wave alongside those of Pete Maravich, Frank Layden, Mark Eaton, Darrell Griffith, Jeff Hornacek, John Stockton and Karl Malone.

"I feel good because you keep reading things like you've got to have your jersey retired before you get in the Hall of Fame," Dantley told Chris Tomasson of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver Thursday night.

"It's a great honor," Dantley added. "I knew my jersey would be retired sooner or later. Now, I don't have to have guys around the league giving me a hard time asking 'Why isn't your jersey up there?"'

During Wednesday's call, Miller asked Dantley for a list of family, friends and coaches he'd like to have at his jersey-retirement luncheon and a list of those he'd like to have speak on the occasion.