A Miller's tale: the storied life of a Utah empire builder.

• Author: Knowles, Skip
• Position: Feature - Larry H. Miller - Biography

What would it be like to be Larry H. Miller? To walk into the Delta Center and know you own it all? To hear the pulsing crowd cheering in the house you built for the team you bought? To know this vibrant carnival scene is all your doing--from the beautiful dancers to the millionaire athletes, from the famous coach working the referees to the media you seated and fed for free? [paragraph] What would that feel like? Not content. Not Larry. Too driven. He lives his life according to the Japanese principle of kaizen, striving for continuous improvement, and the Lexus motto "relentless pursuit of perfection." [paragraph] Standing at the microphone, the Utah Jazz owner looks pretty tough, in a short, bald, wise guy sort of way. With broad shoulders and widely spaced, heavy-lidded eyes, Miller looks like he could definitely persuade someone to see things his way, one way or another. [paragraph] Then he starts to sniffle, and the big blue eyes drop to the floor. He wipes his nose, and soon you realize Miller is crying on camera again, and you just want to give the guy a hug. [paragraph] Where is the cold, calculating businessman, the ruthless corporate leader, the long sharp teeth of the capitalist? Poker faces are not supposed to have tears on them. He used to hate that renowned sniffle but no longer fights it. He remembers the day he came to terms with his emotional volatility.

Doing It His Own Way

Miller was parts manager at a Toyota dealership in Colorado in the mid-seventies, when a boisterous 300-plus-pound, 6-foot-6-inch-tall football player named Gary became a top car seller. Huge and loud, Gary intimidated customers and compensated by hamming it up.

Gary called everyone "Moe" and developed a bizarre closing strategy. Stuck on a price near the end of a deal, with the atmosphere growing tense, Gary would suddenly bang his head on his desk hard, yelling, "You gotta help me, Moe!"

Tensions evaporated, everyone laughed and deals closed.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

One day, a different salesman was stuck on a final price for a Toyota Corolla, wrangling with a tight-fisted schoolteacher for hours. Desperate, he decided to try big Gary's head-banging technique. "You gotta help me, Moe!" he yelled and banged his head. And lay there. And didn't move ... and started sliding back off the desk. The staff, watching, realized he had knocked himself out. Mortified, the school-teacher leapt up and rabbited out the door.

"I learned right there you gotta do it your own...