That was my thing. I always believed if you don’t have the fans pumped up, it’s kind of hard to win a championship. – Antoine Carr
SALT LAKE CITY — The line for pretzels was as long as the one for the Big Dawg on Monday. Young kids at EnergySolutions Arena were accompanied by their parents, who fondly remember when Antoine Carr was growling and barking his way around town.
The kids, well, they were there for the soda.
“Woof-woof!” a thirtysomething man in a Jazz hat yelled.
“You did that for me!” Carr called back.
He deepened his voice in mock menace.
“Woof!” he growled, handing the man an autograph. “There you go, bro.”
Carr is in town in conjunction with the Jazz Summer League, to hold clinics. The kids come, get instructions, and wait in line for an autograph from someone they don’t know. No problem; their parents know him.
What Carr finds is a different Salt Lake than the one he left after four seasons in Utah. In 1994-98, he was a local phenomenon, barking away on TV as the playoffs rolled around.
Now it’s just another team struggling to make a name.
Carr’s routine might have been contrived, but the fans loved it. They worshipped Jerry Sloan as he stormed the sidelines; venerated Jeff Hornacek, Karl Malone and John Stockton as they battled through the most memorable part of their careers.
And they celebrated the guy whose nickname commemorates the rottweiler his father gave him for protection when he was a kid. Carr says the dog went everywhere with him. A quarter century later, he was barking his way into the affection of Jazz fans.
“That was my thing,” he said. “I always believed if you don’t have the fans pumped up, it’s kind of hard to win a championship.”
It was hard regardless. The Jazz lost to Chicago in the 1997 and 1998 NBA Finals.
While Carr wasn’t a big scorer, he had physicality and presence: shaved head, goggles, goatee. He was a nice complement to the Mailman, who also could freeze opponents with a stare.
As such, Carr had a front row seat to history. Sloan, he says, was as hard-headed and driven as he seemed.
“Sure, we’ve gotten sideways with each other before. He’s that type of coach,” Carr said. “He’s old school and he believes, ‘Hey, let me tell you what it is.’”
He contends players today don’t listen the way the ‘90s Jazz players did.
“A lot of these young ones forget to respect the game,” Carr said. “I say go back to your history; understand what the NBA is all about. Don’t come in and say you’re the better than sliced bread.”
Carr was popular enough, but knew which players ran the team and were its best. The current Jazz, he claims, need help in that area.
“For me, they have to find their identity,” he said. “Right now they’re, ‘Well, we can have this guy who’s gonna be the face of our franchise, or that guy.’ I say pick someone and let’s go about what we do. We knew Karl and John were the men on our team, but the rest of us took our places and we’d say, ’Hey, look, our piece is valuable, too.’”
Unfortunately for Carr — and Utahns — the Jazz train arrived at the wrong time: Michael Jordan’s time. After the team's failed '90s run, Carr left as a free agent. He spent several years in Utah after retiring, running a flooring business until “the lady got tired of flooring in the snow and said, ‘Let’s go back to Texas.’” He was briefly in Houston and now lives in San Antonio.
Before arriving in Utah, Carr spent 11 years playing in Atlanta, Sacramento and San Antonio, teaming with such stars as David Robinson, Kevin Willis and Moses Malone.
The toughest player he ever saw?
“Probably the toughest (to guard), just on basketball, I would have to say Larry Bird,” Carr said. “He made me look foolish a few times. And he talked stuff to me while he was lighting me up. I’m like, ‘Wow!’”
But the roughest of the tough guys?
The Mailman, naturally.
“He was just a beast; a guy who goes to work and comes at you every time. If you get in the way of a country boy, regardless of what you have to do, he keeps coming at you.”
Then there were the pretenders.
“The one who thought he was tough was Charles Oakley — if you thought tough was in words,” the Big Dog said. “Otherwise, he was not very tough.”
Woof!
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