On the NBA: Korver's strong roots remain

After four-plus seasons with the 76ers, Kyle Korver had finally gotten his house the way he wanted - new paint, new wallpaper. He considered himself a Philadelphian; he spent all year in the city, not going back to his native Pella, Iowa, to see his family in the summer. He had learned the city and its rhythms, and he was comfortable.

And then, he was traded.

"You hear about people getting traded, and you kind of think about it for a second, but you don't really think about it," Korver said last week. "You're uprooted. I felt like I had some pretty decent roots down in Philadelphia."

But Korver has had to adjust on the fly since being traded to the Utah Jazz on Dec. 29 for guard Gordan Giricek and a future first-round pick. Korver came out to the city at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains alone. He's had to suddenly slather his hands in lotion because of the bone-cold Utah winter, and he had to invest in outerwear.

"I went online," Korver said, "and found the warmest coat I could find."

So far, Korver's on-court adjustment to the Jazz has been incremental. In his first five games, he made just 5 of 20 three-point attempts, far off his career .413 pace entering this season. Overall, he's averaging 10.4 points on 43 percent shooting.

But Utah believes, in time, that Korver's long-distance stroke will return, and that his presence will space the floor for Carlos Boozer inside and point guard Deron Williams outside.

"Before, it really came down to teams just packed it in and just dared us to shoot the ball," Boozer said. "For us, [Korver] gives us another option on the perimeter. And if he gets fouled, he knocks down his free throws."

The Jazz, who made the Western Conference finals last season, expect to win every night. The 76ers expected to win their games, too, but the final result often belied their plans.

Korver still misses Philly.

"All those guys, I've been around them for a while," he said. "Just because I'd seen the lows, I wanted to be there for the highs that are coming. They have some young guys there that can play. I think the organization is on the right track. There's definitely a part of me that wanted to stay. I think that's probably one of the first things, when I got traded, that I was sad about."

But he was sadder still to leave a bunch of kids with whom he had grown close the last couple of years at the Kearny School in Center City, a kindergarten through eighth-grade school whose students mainly come from poor neighborhoods.

What started off as tossing a football around with a few Kearny students every once in a while in West Chester before Bible studies became a weekly get-together at the Helping Hands Mission - the only place near the school big enough to handle the growing program (now up to 50 children, Korver estimates, with 20 or so volunteers helping out).

Eileen Spagnola, the school's principal, recalled by telephone Friday afternoon that she first saw Korver shooting baskets with some of her students at school, not knowing exactly who he was.

"They loved him," Spagnola said. "They miss him already. When we came back from [Christmas break] for school, that was all the buzz around the school. They told me, 'Kyle was traded.' They were very upset."

Korver took the kids to Sixers and Phillies games, had them over to his house for barbecues, and gave them his cell number. He bought baskets for the school's gym and furnished the new basketball team with uniforms.

"It's not super-organized," Korver said. "We don't have a curriculum. We don't have all these programs that we can offer. We just offer time and love."

In return, the kids were a constant source of replenishment for Korver's deep religious roots (his father, Kevin, is still the reverend at the Third Reformed Church in Pella). A regular at Basketball Without Borders in South Africa the last couple of summers, Korver still needed renewed focus on his spiritual side.

"I just see some of the guys with so much stuff, so many things, so much money, so much popularity, and I don't see a whole lot of happiness, to be honest," he said. "Seeing that really changed my mind. . . . A lot of things [about playing in the NBA] are great. It's a dream come true. But at the same time, it wasn't filling the void that I needed it to."