Jazz Head Coach Tyrone Corbin Hires Sidney Lowe as Assistant

Tyrone Corbin has a new assistant coach on the Utah Jazz bench, his good friend (and former teammate) Sidney Lowe. Reports the Deseret News: “When Tyrone Corbin was hired to be Jerry Sloan’s successor in February, the new Utah Jazz coach received a congratulatory phone call from an old friend. About two months later, the same buddy — whom he played alongside two decades ago — dialed Corbin’s digits for a much different reason. ‘Now,’ Sidney Lowe told Corbin in that second conversation, ‘I’m calling for a job.’ Any extra-minute fees or roaming charges incurred back then proved to be well worth it. Lowe, Corbin’s teammate in 1989-90 during Minnesota’s inaugural season, was introduced Thursday as the Jazz’s third assistant coach. It took half of a year for Lowe’s job-seeking call to result in an offer, but the two-time NBA head coach and his new boss couldn’t be happier that the feeler chat led to them being on the same team again. ‘I always respected him (Corbin) since we played together — class guy, great work ethic,’ Lowe said. ‘I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to again get with a great organization and also work with an old friend.’ Lowe has been all over the basketball map since he was a point guard occasionally dishing the ball to the Milk Man in Minnesota. Following a short stint as the head coach (at age 32) of the T-Wolves for a season and a half from 1992-94, Lowe has spent time on the sidelines as an assistant at Cleveland, Minnesota and Detroit. He had a second shot as an NBA head coach with Vancouver (2000-02), and most recently spent five seasons as the bench boss at his alma mater, North Carolina State. Lowe, who was Thurl Bailey’s teammate on the Wolfpacks’ Jim Valvano-coached national championship team in 1983, stepped down as the NC State coach this past March. That move made him available for a friendship reunion and a return to the NBA. ‘I got a good one,’ Corbin said, smiling.”