Utah Jazz: Korver left part of his heart in Philly

PHILADELPHIA — Tony Bennett left his heart in a certain left-coast locale where the sourdough is super, the demographics are diverse and the views are beyond belief.

Philadelphia is Kyle Korver's San Francisco.

It's where a kid raised in Iowa came to embrace not only the cheesesteak — plain, no onions — but also the fabric of a blue-collar Eastern seaboard city that hugged him right back.

No wonder Korver seemed so emotional Monday, when he worked out here with the Jazz one day before his first game in Philly since being traded by the 76ers to Utah late last December.

"I feel like this is kind of where I found myself ... as a man," said Korver, who spent the first 4 1/2 years of his NBA career with the Sixers. "I have a lot of really close friends here.

"I hated it at first, and everyone here knows that," he added while sitting on a table at his old practice facility, the gym at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and fighting the cracks in his voice. "I've said it before. I did not like Philadelphia at all at first. It took me a year or two to kind of get used to it. But I really got to know the city a lot, the people in it, the heart here. And, you know, I love it now."

Korver spent most of this past summer here, even after being dealt to the Jazz.

He still has a home here.

He slept in his own bed here Sunday night, after the Jazz's loss in New York that kicked off a five-game trip, and ate his favorite food here Monday.

"Part of my heart," he said, "is here, for sure."

A portion of those belonging to some with the 76ers was torn, too, when the franchise severed ties with Korver — enabling them to create enough team payroll salary cap space to sign longtime Los Angeles Clippers big man Elton Brand last offseason.

"It was just tough," Sixers coach Maurice Cheeks said Monday. "But, you know, sometimes hard decisions have to be made — and that was certainly one of the hardest."

Basketball was one reason.

"No. 1," Cheeks said, "he's one of the best shooters in the NBA."

But the pain of parting cuts much deeper.