Greg Miller fondly talks about his father-son relationships

One thing became very evident during my recent interview with Greg Miller:
The new Jazz boss loves his dad very much.
During our 23-minute meeting, the younger Miller often turned the conversation toward Larry H. Miller, who recently had both of his legs amputated 6 inches below his knees after nearly dying for the fifth time since having a heart attack and a multitude of type-2-diabetes-related health issues last summer.
It was actually a touching tribute from Greg Miller.
We only had room for answers from five questions during this interview, which means some pretty interesting things had to be left out.
Including several stories in which Greg Miller shows how much he loves his own children as well.
Here are a few:

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I asked Greg Miller what his favorite Jazz memory was, half-expecting him to talk about the excitement surrounding the famous shot by John Stockton against Houston that sent Utah to its first NBA Finals in 1997.
His answer included Stockton, but it wasn’t “The Shot.”
It was “The Re-entry.”
Miller remembered a game back at the Salt Palace in the late ’80s, early ’90s during which the Jazz point guard was hurt and had to be taken to the locker room. A concerned Larry Miller followed him there. The Jazz’s lead also departed.
“You could just kind of feel the air leaving the building. It was like, ‘Oh, we’re losing,’” Miller said. “I just remember this sense of kind of being in a tailspin.”
About 15 minutes later, Stockton returned into the arena and jogged back to the bench. The elder Miller was right behind him.
Greg Miller has never forgotten that comforting moment. He said he “just (had) that feeling of ‘OK, we’re in good hands again.’”
“Not just with John, but with my dad,” he added. “Just having that leadership and that presence back in the room. It kind of took the weight off and it’s like, ‘All right. Everything’s going to be OK.’”
Interestingly, Miller can’t recall if Utah pulled out the win.
It really doesn’t matter, either.
“I don’t even remember if we won the game or not, but I just remember for me that was a great lesson in leadership and examples, and how you carry yourself and the value of reputation and hard work.”
Things the Jazz community definitely got from his dad and from Stockton.

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I love how Greg Miller is able to do a bunch of annual adventures and activities – four-wheeling, vacations, etc. – with his family and six children every year. That’s just a fun concept.
But not every adventure the Millers have together is a fun one.
Miller talked about once owning a tree farm in South Jordan. He sold the property and had to relocate thousands and thousands of trees from that lot to Idaho.
While 2008 was “The Year of a Hundred Adventures,” that year was “The Year of 15,000 Trees.”
Helps to have sons.
“We had to relocate 15,000 trees, so I enlisted the service of my sons and their friends,” he said.
They ended up loading 11 semi-trucks full of trees.
Good times.
“Even though my kids weren’t having a lot of fun out there, walking through the mud and loading all those trees on the truck, I think they look back on it now and it was a character-building experience,” Greg Miller said. “They wouldn’t want to rush out and do it again, but they were glad to have the opportunity to do it when they did.”

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I also liked this quote from Greg Miller about why he does so many adventures with his kids and wife, Heidi.
“It’s just family unity,” he said. “It’s just my family is the most important thing to me and I want to try to build character in my kids. And being in environments like that gives me an opportunity to be an influence on my kids.”
With all the potential negative influences out there, he simply wants to be the biggest influence in his kids’ lives.
“So, might as well have fun while we’re doing it,” he said.

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He really likes the Miller Motorsports Park, which he ran before taking over the reins of the Jazz from his dad, but the Toyota store in Murray probably holds the biggest spot in Greg Miller’s heart.
“If I were to list the entities in the organization that I had a fondness for in my heart, MMP would be one of them, but it wouldn’t be at the top of the list. I would probably put our Toyota store in Murray at the top of the list just because I was there the day my dad made the deal to buy it. That was the first store that my dad bought.
“If you liken the organization to a tree, that’s like the trunk of the tree. And everything that this organization is now, including the Jazz and the racetrack, are branches of that trunk. They were opportunities that came to us through our success through the Toyota store, so I would list that at the top.”
And the biggest reason he loves the MMP?
His dad, of course.
“As far as MMP, I think part of the reason I like that so much is because I know how much it means to my dad. That was certainly a project that he loved and was involved in at a very detailed level from the outset. It was a place for him to exercise his love of cars and he’s developed a pretty cool collection of old Cobras and GT40s over the years.
“Before his eyesight got too bad, he had an opportunity to go out there and run those cars a little bit.”
He’ll cherish the times he spent with his dad out at the Tooele track.
“For me it’s not so much from a business standpoint, but just the experiences more like father-son experiences with my dad.
“The first year the track was in operation I spent a lot of time with my dad just kind of wandering around out there and driving around on the golf cart and being with him as he would stop and engage in conversation with total strangers …
“As teams were working on their cars in the Grand Prix garages, he’d just walk in and introduce himself and say, ‘What are you doing?’ Say, ‘How fast is this?’ and start asking technical questions and it was really an environment that he could have a lot of fun in.
“And when he’s having fun I’m having fun. It’s nice to see him relax because we all know he spent many years putting himself and his enjoyment on the backburner and working hard for all of us to have these opportunities that we enjoy now.”

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Greg Miller doesn’t sugarcoat everything about his dad. He even admitted that Larry H. Miller can occasionally boil over.
“I don’t think it’s any secret my dad had a temper,” he said.
The son learned a lesson from his dad’s emotions – something that’s helped him control his own temper.
“I don’t even really think I have a temper,” Greg Miller said.
He then looked over at his son, who attended the Spurs game with him that night and asked, “Do I Bryce? I mean it’s there, but you’ve got to push pretty hard to find it.:
Bryce laughed.
“Yeah,” he said, “you just have a look.”
Greg Miller was thankful to his dad for helping him learn from the good and the bad in how to be a dad of his own.
“Nobody’s perfect, but by watching what I liked and what I didn’t like in my dad has helped me become a better father to my kids.”