It's May 1992, and Jim Matheson stands up near the far back row of the Delta Center and screams down at Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, a mere ant on the floor so far below.
"Put in Delaney Rudd. You have no point guard in the offense!"
And finally Sloan does. The Jazz come back to nip the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 5 of a playoff series and move on.
A fan yelling at a coach is nothing new. But those who know Matheson say even his screaming from the bleachers shows his analytical side: He saw the problem, thought about it and figured out an answer.
It's how Matheson approaches politics, too, they say.
"I don't know anyone who thinks about issues as long and as hard as Jim does," says Eric O. Leavitt, a 10-year friend of Matheson, the Democratic nominee in the 2nd Congressional District this year.
And Leavitt knows something about driven men who love to find solutions to public problems. He's the younger brother of GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt. And, yes, Eric Leavitt is a strong Matheson supporter. The comeback Clippers game is just one example of how Matheson sees solutions, says longtime friend Mike Smith, who, like Leavitt, is a Republican who supports Matheson.
"I was sitting up with Jim during that game, and of course Sloan couldn't hear him. But when (Sloan) put Rudd in the game and we won, everyone around us thought Jim was some kind of basketball genius. But the fact that we were sitting up in those bad seats (season tickets Matheson used to own) was also a tribute to Jim's fiscal conservatism. The guy is cheap."
Real cheap.
Leavitt recalls how he'd hounded Matheson for years to buy a new car. Matheson had driven a 1978 280Z, which he bought used, since 1984. He finally got rid of it last year after his first child was born and he couldn't get himself, his wife and child in the two-seater sports car.
"Yeah, it was rusted out. You could see the road through the floorboards. But it passed inspections and it ran," Matheson said.
Matheson, 40, is the third of four children born to the late Democratic Gov. Scott M. Matheson and his wife, Norma. "Being in the middle I'm the most well-adjusted. All (my siblings) say that," Matheson jokes.
Raised in Salt Lake City, where his father was chief counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad and, later, governor, Matheson attended East High School, where, he says, he was known for two specific accomplishments: He and his tennis partner took state his senior year in A doubles and he organized a Guinness Book of World Records record in mass musical chairs.
The latter was typical Matheson. He studied all the records and figured out "what was the easiest but still could be done" with no money and little time. With 1,789 classmates they set the record, which has since been broken. "But, hey, I still have the copy of that issue of the (Guinness Book) record. We did it."
Matheson continued the family tradition of "being really smart" — as longtime friend Mike Smith puts it — and was accepted at Harvard. (Older brother Scott Jr. is a Rhodes scholar.) There Matheson met his future wife, Wellesley student Amy Herbener. She is now a pediatrician working for the University of Utah's health network.
Their son, Will, will be 2 next month.
At Harvard, Matheson was the play-by-play announcer for Harvard sports radio. "We didn't win many games, as you can imagine. Ivy League schools aren't known as powerhouses in football or basketball. But I did get to visit every campus where we played, and it was great fun."
After Harvard, Matheson worked for three years in Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist for the Environmental Policy Center, which he describes as a nonprofit environmental think tank.
He helped kill the federal government's multimillion-dollar Synthetic Fuels Corp. program, which Matheson described as "wasteful."
"I learned you can make a difference in Washington if you put together a bipartisan effort and work hard," he said.
He took a summer off from the center to run family friend Wayne Owens' 1984 gubernatorial campaign. Owens lost to Republican Norm Bangerter.
"But we outpolled every other Democrat on the ballot and we ended the campaign with no debt — a big goal for me," Matheson said. In 1986, with Matheson off getting a master's degree, Owens ran and won the 2nd Congressional District, winning re-election in 1988 and 1990.
It showed Matheson that a Democrat could win the district — with some planning and effort.
Not wanting to become an attorney like his father and older brother, Matheson decided after the 1994 governor's race to get an MBA from UCLA. And after that, in 1988, he returned to Utah to go to work for a growing company called Bonneville Pacific.
Matheson said he was as surprised as anyone when one day in 1991 "the company went into bankruptcy, and I and a lot of other good people got pink slips. Fired."
Matheson then joined Energy Strategies, where he helped large companies and governments save money on their energy consumption. Ultimately, in 1998 he formed his own energy consulting firm, which he shut down at the end of 1999 to run full time for Congress.
Matheson said public policy was part of his upbringing, discussed around the dinner table. While political pundits kept talking about older brother Scott Jr. running for office, it's Jim who jumped in first.
"This (2000 race) was a question of timing," Matheson said. He considered the 1998 2nd District race, but Democrat Lily Eskelsen had already been in the race for months, and Matheson didn't want a primary. So he waited, planned and got in the 2000 race 18 months ago, raising a lot of money early and eliminating any Democratic challengers.
Planning. The long view. And figuring out some way to get an edge. It's what Leavitt and Smith saw in Matheson when they all worked — and played — at Bonneville Pacific.
"Jim was the pitcher in our coed slow-pitch softball team," Smith says. Matheson played hard and fair, but he wasn't above using some, well, crafty techniques.
He's meticulous. He studied how to pitch. He'd throw some high ones, some flat ones," Smith says. And he'd save some of his toughest pitches for female opposition players when he needed an out.
Leavitt, chief executive officer of the family insurance company, The Leavitt Group, says he talks to Matheson almost daily. "We talk about issues a lot. He's one of the most thoughtful guys I know," Leavitt said.
"He is very fiscally conservative. It's not some grand scheme he's come up with to get elected."
When Matheson says he wants to pay down the national debt first, then look at tax cuts for "working Americans," it's something he's talked with Leavitt about for years, Leavitt said. "I'm a Republican. I'm a conservative guy. But we can't just send someone to Washington because they have an R with their name.
"When you first meet Jim he doesn't say much. He's quiet. He's contemplative. When he takes a stand on something you can bet he's thought about it and feels passionately about it. But he can be a fun guy, too."
And he doesn't mind yelling down at the coach every now and then, either.
E-MAIL: bbjr@desnews.com