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I wish I could be a casual Jazz fan.

SoberasHotRod

SoberasHotRod

Well-Known Member
2025 Award Winner
I wish I could be satisfied watching a couple of games per year. It would be nice if I only thought about the Jazz when they were brought up in conversation by someone else. I’d love to only really know the names of our top guys vs the full life story of each two way player (preferably I wouldn’t know what a two way player was).

The more time and effort you put in to something, the more invested you are in to something, the more painful it is when you are disappointed. So when the best chance of the Jazz ending the season in a win, possibly in my life time, is dashed away by endless wide open Terance Mann 3-pointers, it’s like the culmination of the thousands of hours the Jazz have occupied my thoughts crushing my heart.

To the casual fan a win is fun and a loss is fine. They don’t spend hours after each game struggling to turn their brain off to get to sleep. The casual fan is free to enjoy life and their family October through June. The casual fan is capable of being a good employee on trade deadline or free agency start day, and not constantly checking for updates.

It’s just so illogical. No amount of effort or time I put in to the Jazz will make the team perform any better. Yet, my mood, productivity, and general well being are all tied in to this. So last Friday night I decided to stop it. No more following Jazz Twitter. No more constantly checking Jazzfanz. No more looking for new articles to read.

Well… that lasted two days. And here I am again. Back on Jazzfanz. Reading the myriad of horrible takes and trade ideas. Starting to have a glimmer of hope for next year. Finding myself interested in what the Jazz do at the draft and in free agency.

Oh No! I already know how this ends next year. Maybe I need help.
 
We’re all in it together! I feel this post.

This season being over hurts more because expectations were so much higher. The team did make it further than last year, which I guess is one way to measure this season as a success. But money was definitely left on the table. I was (am?) in disbelief it was really over. Conley was supposed to come back and save us, Derek fisher-style! Bojan was finding a new fire for perimeter defense. Don continued to do super human things. Quin would figure out a way to counter the small-ball looks! We’d put it together to overcome and take our rightful place at the top.

Nope. It really didn’t happen.

…Are you sure we aren’t hosting the Suns tomorrow? I can be at the arena just in case. LMK.
 
NUMBERICA said:
I want nothing more in my life. Few things provide fewer returns than being obsessed with this stupid garbage.
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I think this sums it up. There are a handful of super optimists who keep telling you that you're being short-sighted and how you're neglecting your returns. Yet we all sit there at the slot machines and somewhere after putting a couple hundred dollars in over the better part of the day, you hit some loud noises and $20 in change starts spitting out of the machine, everyone gets excited, and the optimist says "see! Look at that big return! I bet you wish you weren't so negative now!"
 
I think all of us are still learning how to best cope with these heartbreakers. Not sure what advice I have other than that this still doesn't hold a candle to game 6 in 97, 98, and especially 99 when we knew that was officially the end of the window.

My outlook is to expect the worst and hope for the best. I try not to get too attached during the regular season. It sucks though. We probably won't ever sniff the finals ever again
 
On the flip side I also can't stand the casual negative fans. The ones who don't watch the games, they don't suffer through the same crap we do, but then they think they are entitled to sit there and complain when things aren't going well or when we get bumped. That pisses me off. Like this year people come out of the woodwork to say how we're never going to go anywhere, etc., etc. I end up being the target because I always watch, and they act like they're so enlightened by this fact, but then feel they're entitled to wallow in self-pity that only those of us who have suffered through it have earned.
 
I was a casual until the last few seasons.

I am still more invested in college sports (USU and Kansas) than I am to the Jazz. That being said, the Jazz have really sucked me in the last few years because the NBA has the benefit of being something you can follow basically year-round. Long season, playoffs, draft, summer league, free agency, and then you’re basically already back in training camp and ready to go again.

We’re just a few weeks away from all being balls-deep in draft workouts/trade speculation. The combine is this week!
 
Yep same, I stopped pretty much all online until today I also couldn't watch anything NBA related on TV. Heck even after the game 4 loss I was slowing my online consumption of the Jazz cause of all the negativity and didn't need anything making more pissed and disapointed than I was already getting from watching the games.
 
infection said:
On the flip side I also can't stand the casual negative fans. The ones who don't watch the games, they don't suffer through the same crap we do, but then they think they are entitled to sit there and complain when things aren't going well or when we get bumped. That pisses me off. Like this year people come out of the woodwork to say how we're never going to go anywhere, etc., etc. I end up being the target because I always watch, and they act like they're so enlightened by this fact, but then feel they're entitled to wallow in self-pity that only those of us who have suffered through it have earned.
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This

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using JazzFanz mobile app
 
I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller. I wish I had a girl who looked good - I would call her. I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat & a six four Impala.
 
The Dwill team that got the Jazz competitive again sucked me in for the first time since I painted my face and flew to DC for some school trip in 98. The looks of having Jazz painted on my face waling in DC was priceless. I temper my expectations a lot and try to enjoy the journey. The way this year went down just tore my heart out. I still don't believe we were the worse team especially with the breaks. I'll probably still follow a lot, but it will take a lot for me to open myself up by considering us a contender again. I think next year is going to be much more difficult. There is such an amazing window that is open right now. Too bad it's not for us.

To be fair we caused the CP3 BG DJ clipps to be dismantled, I thought we were going to break up the PG/KL clippers and Ingles was going to be PGs Daddy like in his OKC days. I think this sting goes to our grave tbo. I guess it was our turn to get upset. Though it gives me no peace.
 
Well I've been a fan for 41 years now I guess. I first became a fan at age 10, in 1980. I was a die-hard fan through junior high and high school. I won an honor in junior high that allowed me to be an honorary ball boy the year Karl Malone was drafted, which was pretty incredible. Got to be there for about a dozen games and some practices. Met the team got a Daryl Griffith jersey signed by pretty much everybody. That's under lockdown.

Pretty much the only time I didn't follow them very very closely was during my mission from 89 to 91, but even then my dad was sending me newspaper clippings and trying to keep me informed of how they were doing.

Heck I can remember of course the finals years. My whole family was at my house in 97, for "the shot", and we all went nuts and caused our elderly neighbor to ask us why we were being so loud the night before.

In 98, sitting in front of my computer on the dial-up modem, I remember hoping against hope that maybe we could pick up Anton Jameson, even knowing we really had no hope. But it was my first real foray into internet fandom. And it was also a mere 3 months or so before my cancer diagnosis. And I can tell you the Jazz went a long way to helping me maintain my sanity through a long year and a half of cancer treatments. And of course the disappointments that come with early outs in the playoffs. But that was okay I knew we had just witnessed something special.

I remember Jerry Sloan taking that rag tag team nearly to the brink of the playoffs, and how much fun that season was.

Then of course we had our highest draft pick ever and drafted Deron Williams. Not long after we acquired Carlos boozer. I was very high on Andre kirilenko, and really thought with him boozer memo and D will that we had the core to really compete. Too bad that never materialized.

From that point forward, Donovan Mitchell, and Rudy Gobert, have brought probably the most hope for me since John Stockton hung up his sneakers. I felt for a while now that this team could be special. So I will say that the way this playoffs ended this year, might be the single lowest point of my 40 years of being a jazz fan. I thought this year we had the best chance our franchise really ever had of breaking through and winning a championship.

And now, I'm pretty jaded. I'm beginning to think there's not just a glass ceiling, but one made of rebar reinforced concrete, that we will never break through, at least not in my lifetime. And I have given the most thought this year to hanging up my own sneakers, and becoming a casual fan, if not simply bailing out on the NBA entirely.

With the emergence of super teams, and the fact that Utah for the last 40 years has been such a very difficult draw for free agents, and even for trades, heck remember even Mike Conley was rumored to have killed the trade in the first place, so even the nicest guy in the NBA didn't really want to come here. And now, there is a lot of uncertainty.

The Lakers will undoubtedly add another star, even if an aging one, and a couple more good solid role players who want to chase the ring, and after a summer to recover they will be at full strength. Brooklyn has now had a full season to play together, and an off-season to get healthy, and retool to fill in the gaps, again likely with aging but very solid role players and stars, to fill out the end of their bench. And now with the emergence of the Suns, who I really am hoping win it all this year, and look to likely only get better next year as they can roll the whole thing back, and retool a little bit to fill in their gaps. All while the jazz are looking more and more fractured, and fatally flawed.

I honestly don't know if I have the energy to go through one, two, or even three more rebuilds, in the hopes that maybe we can get back to the Western Conference finals, just to be knocked off by the latest super team. Frankly that all sounds highly depressing.

So I have a lot of thinking to do this off-season. I know I'm not going to just stop being a fan, that's like saying I'm going to stop being a Mormon, even if you have a firm belief that it isn't the right thing for you, it's not that easy to let it go. So we'll see what they do in the offseason, and maybe they can pull a rabbit out of a hat, yet again, and actually be more competitive next year. Although my gut tells me not to really hope for that. Because odds are we will have a difficult time adding pieces that can counter what the true contending teams can add this off season, and not even just because our cap situation is basically ****ed, but just getting the guys to come here, like Batum was rumored to have just flatly turned us down. Batum. Not even a permanent rotation piece. Add to that the fact that I have now almost completely lost my faith in anything the front office can do, and I feel very strongly that Quinn Snyder has been exposed, and is not a coach that can lead a team very deep into the playoffs.

So all of this means I went from being the highest I have maybe ever been on this team, minus our finals years, to being just about as low on this team as I ever have been. That's a pretty big distance to crash.

So I'm going to take a wait and see attitude, but I'm going to try very hard not to invest anything emotionally in this team until I see what they can put on the floor.

Sometimes Life comes at you pretty fast, and not in a mad cap Ferris buellerian way, but in the real way that feels like a gut punch, and it makes it look like the problems of being a Utah Jazz fan are just not worth carrying anymore, all things considered.

I Guess we'll see.
 
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LogGrad98 said:
Well I've been a fan for 31 years now I guess. I first became a fan at age 10, in 1980. I was a die-hard fan through junior high and high school. I won an honor in junior high that allowed me to be an honorary ball boy the year Karl Malone was drafted, which was pretty incredible. Got to be there for about a dozen games and some practices. Met the team got a Daryl Griffith jersey signed by pretty much everybody. That's under lockdown.

Pretty much the only time I didn't follow them very very closely was during my mission from 89 to 91, but even then my dad was sending me newspaper clippings and trying to keep me informed of how they were doing.

Heck I can remember of course the finals years. My whole family was at my house in 97, for "the shot", and we all went nuts and caused our elderly neighbor to ask us why we were being so loud the night before.

In 98, sitting in front of my computer on the dial-up modem, I remember hoping against hope that maybe we could pick up Anton Jameson, even knowing we really had no hope. But it was my first real foray into internet fandom. And it was also a mere 3 months or so before my cancer diagnosis. And I can tell you the Jazz went a long way to helping me maintain my sanity through a long year and a half of cancer treatments. And of course the disappointments that come with early outs in the playoffs. But that was okay I knew we had just witnessed something special.

I remember Jerry Sloan taking that rag tag team nearly to the brink of the playoffs, and how much fun that season was.

Then of course we had our highest draft pick ever and drafted Deron Williams. Not long after we acquired Carlos boozer. I was very high on Andre kirilenko, and really thought with him boozer memo and D will that we had the core to really compete. Too bad that never materialized.

From that point forward, Donovan Mitchell, and Rudy Gobert, have brought probably the most hope for me since John Stockton hung up his sneakers. I felt for a while now that this team could be special. So I will say that the way this playoffs ended this year, might be the single lowest point of my 30 years of being a jazz fan. I thought this year we had the best chance our franchise really ever had of breaking through and winning a championship.

And now, I'm pretty jaded. I'm beginning to think there's not just a glass ceiling, but one made of rebar reinforced concrete, that we will never break through, at least not in my lifetime. And I have given the most thought this year to hanging up my own sneakers, and becoming a casual fan, if not simply bailing out on the NBA entirely.

With the emergence of super teams, and the fact that Utah for the last 30 years has been such a very difficult draw for free agents, and even for trades, heck remember even Mike Conley was rumored to have killed the trade in the first place, so even the nicest guy in the NBA didn't really want to come here. And now, there is a lot of uncertainty.

The Lakers will undoubtedly add another star, even if an aging one, and a couple more good solid role players who want to chase the ring, and after a summer to recover they will be at full strength. Brooklyn has now had a full season to play together, and an off-season to get healthy, and retool to fill in the gaps, again likely with aging but very solid role players and stars, to fill out the end of their bench. And now with the emergence of the Suns, who I really am hoping win it all this year, and look to likely only get better next year as they can roll the whole thing back, and retool a little bit to fill in their gaps. All while the jazz are looking more and more fractured, and fatally flawed.

I honestly don't know if I have the energy to go through one, two, or even three more rebuilds, in the hopes that maybe we can get back to the Western Conference finals, just to be knocked off by the latest super team. Frankly that all sounds highly depressing.

So I have a lot of thinking to do this off-season. I know I'm not going to just stop being a fan, that's like saying I'm going to stop being a Mormon, even if you have a firm belief that it isn't the right thing for you, it's not that easy to let it go. So we'll see what they do in the offseason, and maybe they can pull a rabbit out of a hat, yet again, and actually be more competitive next year. Although my gut tells me not to really hope for that. Because odds are we will have a difficult time adding pieces that can counter what the true contending teams can add this off season, and not even just because our cap situation is basically ****ed, but just getting the guys to come here, like Batum was rumored to have just flatly turned us down. Batum. Not even a permanent rotation piece. Add to that the fact that I have now almost completely lost my faith in anything the front office can do, and I feel very strongly that Quinn Snyder has been exposed, and is not a coach that can lead a team very deep into the playoffs.

So all of this means I went from being the highest I have maybe ever been on this team, minus our finals years, to being just about as low on this team as I ever have been. That's a pretty big distance to crash.

So I'm going to take a wait and see attitude, but I'm going to try very hard not to invest anything emotionally in this team until I see what they can put on the floor.

Sometimes Life comes at you pretty fast, and not in a mad cap Ferris buellerian way, but in the real way that feels like a gut punch, and it makes it look like the problems of being a Utah Jazz fan are just not worth carrying anymore, all things considered.

I Guess we'll see.
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You keep saying 30 years. Probably to hide the pain that it’s really been 40 years since 1980. But yes. It’s a hard dilemma. I thought I’d tune stuff out for a little bit but here I am still posting the same kind of **** I was when I was 16. My dad essentially tuned out this year. My brothers have been the casualist of fans and are the annoying type to only speak up when things are going south. I don’t follow football or baseball. I don’t follow college sports. I’ve never known what it’s like to have my team win it all. I’m hoping to one day have that experience, and to pull out to be a casual almost has me feel like that experience wouldn’t be the same without all this necessary foreplay that will enhance the final experience. But then the other end of this is that it could be playing with fire if my life as a fan ends up being a massive case of blue balls.
 
LogGrad98 said:
Well I've been a fan for 31 years now I guess. I first became a fan at age 10, in 1980. I was a die-hard fan through junior high and high school. I won an honor in junior high that allowed me to be an honorary ball boy the year Karl Malone was drafted, which was pretty incredible. Got to be there for about a dozen games and some practices. Met the team got a Daryl Griffith jersey signed by pretty much everybody. That's under lockdown.

Pretty much the only time I didn't follow them very very closely was during my mission from 89 to 91, but even then my dad was sending me newspaper clippings and trying to keep me informed of how they were doing.

Heck I can remember of course the finals years. My whole family was at my house in 97, for "the shot", and we all went nuts and caused our elderly neighbor to ask us why we were being so loud the night before.

In 98, sitting in front of my computer on the dial-up modem, I remember hoping against hope that maybe we could pick up Anton Jameson, even knowing we really had no hope. But it was my first real foray into internet fandom. And it was also a mere 3 months or so before my cancer diagnosis. And I can tell you the Jazz went a long way to helping me maintain my sanity through a long year and a half of cancer treatments. And of course the disappointments that come with early outs in the playoffs. But that was okay I knew we had just witnessed something special.

I remember Jerry Sloan taking that rag tag team nearly to the brink of the playoffs, and how much fun that season was.

Then of course we had our highest draft pick ever and drafted Deron Williams. Not long after we acquired Carlos boozer. I was very high on Andre kirilenko, and really thought with him boozer memo and D will that we had the core to really compete. Too bad that never materialized.

From that point forward, Donovan Mitchell, and Rudy Gobert, have brought probably the most hope for me since John Stockton hung up his sneakers. I felt for a while now that this team could be special. So I will say that the way this playoffs ended this year, might be the single lowest point of my 30 years of being a jazz fan. I thought this year we had the best chance our franchise really ever had of breaking through and winning a championship.

And now, I'm pretty jaded. I'm beginning to think there's not just a glass ceiling, but one made of rebar reinforced concrete, that we will never break through, at least not in my lifetime. And I have given the most thought this year to hanging up my own sneakers, and becoming a casual fan, if not simply bailing out on the NBA entirely.

With the emergence of super teams, and the fact that Utah for the last 30 years has been such a very difficult draw for free agents, and even for trades, heck remember even Mike Conley was rumored to have killed the trade in the first place, so even the nicest guy in the NBA didn't really want to come here. And now, there is a lot of uncertainty.

The Lakers will undoubtedly add another star, even if an aging one, and a couple more good solid role players who want to chase the ring, and after a summer to recover they will be at full strength. Brooklyn has now had a full season to play together, and an off-season to get healthy, and retool to fill in the gaps, again likely with aging but very solid role players and stars, to fill out the end of their bench. And now with the emergence of the Suns, who I really am hoping win it all this year, and look to likely only get better next year as they can roll the whole thing back, and retool a little bit to fill in their gaps. All while the jazz are looking more and more fractured, and fatally flawed.

I honestly don't know if I have the energy to go through one, two, or even three more rebuilds, in the hopes that maybe we can get back to the Western Conference finals, just to be knocked off by the latest super team. Frankly that all sounds highly depressing.

So I have a lot of thinking to do this off-season. I know I'm not going to just stop being a fan, that's like saying I'm going to stop being a Mormon, even if you have a firm belief that it isn't the right thing for you, it's not that easy to let it go. So we'll see what they do in the offseason, and maybe they can pull a rabbit out of a hat, yet again, and actually be more competitive next year. Although my gut tells me not to really hope for that. Because odds are we will have a difficult time adding pieces that can counter what the true contending teams can add this off season, and not even just because our cap situation is basically ****ed, but just getting the guys to come here, like Batum was rumored to have just flatly turned us down. Batum. Not even a permanent rotation piece. Add to that the fact that I have now almost completely lost my faith in anything the front office can do, and I feel very strongly that Quinn Snyder has been exposed, and is not a coach that can lead a team very deep into the playoffs.

So all of this means I went from being the highest I have maybe ever been on this team, minus our finals years, to being just about as low on this team as I ever have been. That's a pretty big distance to crash.

So I'm going to take a wait and see attitude, but I'm going to try very hard not to invest anything emotionally in this team until I see what they can put on the floor.

Sometimes Life comes at you pretty fast, and not in a mad cap Ferris buellerian way, but in the real way that feels like a gut punch, and it makes it look like the problems of being a Utah Jazz fan are just not worth carrying anymore, all things considered.

I Guess we'll see.
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Beautifully said. It's depressing to take a step back and realize that these opportunities are so difficult to come by in a league with 30 teams. You really have to take advantage of those golden opportunities. We're not the first to blow it either. Celtics over the past 4 years, the Harden Rockets, the Durant / Westbrook Thunder, Nash suns, the 90s pacers / Knicks / Jazz... so many teams that could have won it didn't capitalize. And that's just the NBA. Could you imagine being a Bill's fan losing the Superbowl 4 years in a row?

Being a sports fan is rough
 
infection said:
You keep saying 30 years. Probably to hide the pain that it’s really been 40 years since 1980. But yes. It’s a hard dilemma. I thought I’d tune stuff out for a little bit but here I am still posting the same kind of **** I was when I was 16. My dad essentially tuned out this year. My brothers have been the casualist of fans and are the annoying type to only speak up when things are going south. I don’t follow football or baseball. I don’t follow college sports. I’ve never known what it’s like to have my team win it all. I’m hoping to one day have that experience, and to pull out to be a casual almost has me feel like that experience wouldn’t be the same without all this necessary foreplay that will enhance the final experience. But then the other end of this is that it could be playing with fire if my life as a fan ends up being a massive case of blue balls.
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Oh yeah. 40 years.

**** me. :(
 
infection said:
Hey, I gave you a decade more of misery free of charge. The Jazz will give you the next decade of misery but at a very high cost, both personally and financially.
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Um. So, **** you?

**** the jazz?

Who am I supposed to ****?
 
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