How interested/engaged/enthusiastic are you about the Jazz right now?

[KqWIN]

It wouldn't really affect nationally televised games, so it really only affects local TV deals. I don't understand fully all of the issues, but I know that local TV deals are one of the biggest points of friction in the NBA and cause most of the uneveness among teams. I wonder if at some point local TV deals get figured out and the amount of games can then be reduced.

The local TV deals is a good point. I may be talking out of my *** here, but the main complication there is not really the money but the web of media rights contracts and getting everything in alignment. It's like building a railroad through 30 different counties. You'll have problems if all 30 counties want to get their say in things and it can only really be done if you have all the parties under one central umbrella. It's why league pass sucks and blackouts exists IIRC.

I don't think it makes much sense to have local media TV deals anymore, but that's just how they work. The NBA would have to buyout every contract which must be painful, complicated process. But if they owned the rights to everything they could change more quickly and provide a better product.

 

[cctrackstar]

the team half tanked for two years and got a broken player, AnoThEr undersized combo guard, and a player with great measurables that has no idea how to play. then they do the full tank and move from first to fifth because the league hates tanking just like i do. silver lining, ace might be really good if he, again, learns how to play.

also, i have a long history of rooting for the underdog, or the high energy bench guys, but these last few years they have traded EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM for draft picks, and draft picks traditionally only work out like a third of the time, especially mid firsts which is what most of them will be.

now they are going to find a new way to tank which is trading away MORE high energy guys so that all that is left is young players that all have something wrong with them, and they are supposedly the future? no don't talk about lauri, he's in trade talks all over the place.

so yeah, let me know when they pull their heads out and get back to winning with what they have.

 

[Sardines]

I'm not a fan of college basketball, or draft prospects, or rookies generally. I've been a lifelong fan of the Jazz and what I care about is them winning games, being fun to watch, and at some point having a shot at a championship.

My interest is at an all time low.

The second they look like a team that can get past the first round of the playoffs I'm back on board. I'll want to be there for the regular season so that I'm familiar enough when the playoffs start to know what I'm seeing, know who the players are, know the storylines, etc..

Until then, I'll let the team figure **** out without wasting any time watching trash basketball.

The only thing that will stop me from being a Jazz fan is if the team moves, x10 if they move to Vegas. If the Jazz move to Vegas they will be my most hated team in all of sports.

 

[Thee Jazz Fan]

I don’t know how someone can’t be super excited about any new Jazz season I always find a reason to be excited.

 

[FalseFlagg K]

after completely losing interest lasy year i'm super excited for this season. I really won't mind the losing as i'll enjoy watching the players actually try and the coach / front office trying to lose. Last year held zero interest other than getting a top pick. Watching talented young players develop even if their results suck will be so much more fun than that

Very hopeful of a season of about 20-23 wins, the young guys showing flashes of their talents, Markkanen re-establish himself, then hopefully a top 3 pick and turnaround in fortunes the season after

 

[SoberasHotRod]

I'm surprised that nobody has selected the last option. It feels like we always have a lot of posters that come and go as we acquire new players.

 

[jope]

The vast majority of this board was so adamant about blowing up the team that was hovering around 1st place in the league year after year by trading Rudy and Don.. and now that we’ve sucked for a few years and look to suck for several more, people have lost interest. Go figure.

 

[Swuul]

I'm surprised that nobody has selected the last option. It feels like we always have a lot of posters that come and go as we acquire new players.

Fixed, just for you

 

[SoberasHotRod]

The vast majority of this board was so adamant about blowing up the team that was hovering around 1st place in the league year after year by trading Rudy and Don.. and now that we’ve sucked for a few years and look to suck for several more, people have lost interest. Go figure.

Like I said in my post, me having less interest doesn't have to do with us being bad. I've really gotten in to the draft and I'm excited to see the young guys play. I understood the teardown/rebuild and while I don't agree it's 100% the best thing we could have done, I do still think it was the right move.

That's not completely true though. I think part of my disinterest has come from the letdown of the team being built in a way that I don't really love. I'm fine with our front office seeing the game and team building differently than I do, and I'm not pretending like I would have the team in a better position than they have. I just think the whole process has led me to understand that I have absolutely no control over this thing that is so important to me. When you think about sports team fandom, it's just so illogical. My mood/happiness is so tied in to this thing that I have no say in.

This is why I'm saying that I hope that I'm wiser in my older age and will spend less of my heart and time on something that is so illogical. Now this is all relative as well. My interest/enthusiasm has gone from irrational levels to hopefully healthy levels. I am still a fan and always will be.

 

[SoberasHotRod]

I also think it's normal and natural for interest level/engagement to vary over time. I think we see that with posters who come and go or become more or less active on here.

For me I started getting really interested in the Jazz as a teenager, but I had a ton of diversions and interests so the Jazz were just one of them. My interest waned a little bit as I went to college, got married, and had kids as I was just too busy for any diversions. Once we got out of the baby phase and my job got more steady I started to have more room for thinking about diversions again and that was the peak of my engagement level with the team. I also had more money to pay for league pass and go to games, etc. That's when I started to become a much more active poster on this site. I'm hoping that I'm entering a new stage of my life where I've started to care about more important things and the Jazz become a more healthy interest. We'll see how it goes, wish me luck.

 

[David Hume]

Like I said in my post, me having less interest doesn't have to do with us being bad. I've really gotten in to the draft and I'm excited to see the young guys play. I understood the teardown/rebuild and while I don't agree it's 100% the best thing we could have done, I do still think it was the right move.

That's not completely true though. I think part of my disinterest has come from the letdown of the team being built in a way that I don't really love. I'm fine with our front office seeing the game and team building differently than I do, and I'm not pretending like I would have the team in a better position than they have. I just think the whole process has led me to understand that I have absolutely no control over this thing that is so important to me. When you think about sports team fandom, it's just so illogical. My mood/happiness is so tied in to this thing that I have no say in.

This is why I'm saying that I hope that I'm wiser in my older age and will spend less of my heart and time on something that is so illogical. Now this is all relative as well. My interest/enthusiasm has gone from irrational levels to hopefully healthy levels. I am still a fan and always will be.

Read Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific. He lived with a Tribe in the Trobriand Islands for 2 years and saw they were obsessed with a trade in prestige items, shells and necklaces in particular. They would fantasize about possessing a famous necklace, or an old but coveted bracelet, which would give them prestige as if they won an NBA championship or were Finals MVP or whatever. My point being that it is human nature to have fanatical in-group/out group “tribal” teams and to seek greater prestige, which can translate into better mating opportunities. Or instead of Argonauts, maybe just read an introductory textbook on evolutionary psychology.

 

[NAOS_pt2]

My interest started to plummet the moment it became screamingly obvious that Dennis Lindsay and Quin Snyder had decided that it would be fun to fling poo at one another rather than step into a title window. My interest has bobbed back up a little bit now that the Collins-Sexton-Clarkson era is over. All of those dudes are good guys, but they were good for a treadmill.

 

[jazznik]

Who IS a fan of the Jazz team and not a fan of specific players? Players are not interchangeable and not fungible. If the owner of the Jazz somehow pulled a swap and got an entire 2025 OKC team in the Jazz uniform would you immediately start cheering for them? And if this OKC squad wins the championship in the Jazz jerseys would it not be hollow?

​

 

[Rubashov]

My level of interest in the coming season is somewhere between a prostate exam to a full colonoscopy

 

[Schrödinger's Gerbil]

I also think it's normal and natural for interest level/engagement to vary over time. I think we see that with posters who come and go or become more or less active on here.

For me I started getting really interested in the Jazz as a teenager, but I had a ton of diversions and interests so the Jazz were just one of them. My interest waned a little bit as I went to college, got married, and had kids as I was just too busy for any diversions. Once we got out of the baby phase and my job got more steady I started to have more room for thinking about diversions again and that was the peak of my engagement level with the team. I also had more money to pay for league pass and go to games, etc. That's when I started to become a much more active poster on this site. I'm hoping that I'm entering a new stage of my life where I've started to care about more important things and the Jazz become a more healthy interest. We'll see how it goes, wish me luck.

For me, the Jazz are a diversion from the pressures and stresses of life. Getting emotionally invested in something relatively trivial, benign, and ultimately inconsequential, but at the same time entertaining, has long been an escape for me. That's one reason why I care much more for the entertainment value of Jazz b-ball than whether they win a title. While I enjoy it more at the margin if they advance deeper into the playoffs, I care more about six months of being entertained and having an escape valve. My life won't change, and I won't be any better off if the Jazz win a title, but I'll be better off mentally for six months of escapist entertainment. Now the FO has gone and completely ruined the entertainment value of being a Jazz fan.

Fortunately, Liverpool remains entertaining, although I wish they'd stop playing down to the level of their competition. Giving up two-goal leads in successive games to lower-to-mid-table teams, and one with only 10 men, has been unnecessarily nail-biting, but it HAS been entertaining.

 

[KqWIN]

Regular season is the same for me whether we're winning or not. When the Jazz had the best record in the league, we were constantly reminded of why it didn't matter, and it was true in a championship or bust league. This idea of making everything about the big picture is an incredibly lame fan experience IMO. But that's just me speaking as a "special interest" kind of fan. For most people winning is going to be better than losing by design. But whether you are winning or losing, the NBA does everything it can to tell you that the night to night action does not matter.

 

[Schrödinger's Gerbil]

Regular season is the same for me whether we're winning or not. When the Jazz had the best record in the league, we were constantly reminded of why it didn't matter, and it was true in a championship or bust league. But that's just me speaking as a "special interest" kind of fan. For most people winning is going to be better than losing by design. But whether you are winning or losing, the NBA does everything it can to tell you that the night to night action does not matter.

That is my #1 pet peeve: being constantly told by NBA writers, podcasters, commentators, and others that the regular season doesn't matter and that all that matters is winning in the playoffs. How could we be so naive as to consider it an entertainment product and want, therefore, to be entertained? Don't we know it's ALL about winning a title, and nothing else matters? Pity us, poor rube fans who actually care about the regular season, attending and watching games because we genuinely enjoy it, or want to enjoy it, without compulsively obsessing about winning a title and yoking our fan experience to this expectation.

One can almost draw a straight line from this Rings Culture BS to the modern NBA tanking phenomenon.

 

[KqWIN]

That is my #1 pet peeve: being constantly told by NBA writers, podcasters, commentators, and others that the regular season doesn't matter and that all that matters is winning in the playoffs. How could we be so naive as to consider it an entertainment product and want, therefore, to be entertained? Don't we know it's ALL about winning a title, and nothing else matters? Pity us, poor rube fans who actually care about the regular season, attending and watching games because we genuinely enjoy it, or want to enjoy it, without compulsively obsessing about winning a title and yoking our fan experience to this expectation.

One can almost draw a straight line from this Rings Culture BS to the modern NBA tanking phenomenon.

Tanking is not new and existed before rings culture existed. What is new is that the regular season does not matter for anyone including the good teams. If my interest in the Jazz is waning, it's not because they're losing. It's because even if they were winning the media and culture around the NBA would do anything and everything to tell you why it's not important. Everyone knows about the incentive to lose on a given night when tanking, but there really isn't much incentive to win either unless it's the playoffs..

My theory is that the league becoming so LeBron centric contributed to it being this way. He's done everything there is to do, so all there is to do is win more titles and I think that's fine for him. The problem arises when we view the entire league this way. There is only one LeBron, not everyone should be hyper fixated on counting the rings. For everyone else, there should be meaning to other things besides a championship. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but maybe once he retires the NBA can return to more normalcy and we can appreciate something that isn't judged on this LeBron Legacy scale.

The ironic part about rings culture in today's media environment is that it's not really about who wins the championship, it's about bringing down those who did not. The culture around the NBA is talking about how much the players suck and who is fraudulent etc. and the only thing that can absolve you of that toxicity is winning the title. And when you do win that title the reward is like a few months of not being **** on. It's a negative reinforcement model where the real reward in winning a title is avoiding the backlash of being one of the losers.

This is compounded by other factors like 82 games being too many. What you get is a long season that feels like a pre-season. Compare that to the NFL or EPL where every game feels massive.

 

[Schrödinger's Gerbil]

Tanking is not new and existed before rings culture existed. What is new is that the regular season does not matter for anyone including the good teams. If my interest in the Jazz is waning, it's not because they're losing. It's because even if they were winning the media and culture around the NBA would do anything and everything to tell you why it's not important. Everyone knows about the incentive to lose on a given night when tanking, but there really isn't much incentive to win either unless it's the playoffs..

My theory is that the league becoming so LeBron centric contributed to it being this way. He's done everything there is to do, so all there is to do is win more titles and I think that's fine for him. The problem arises when we view the entire league this way. There is only one LeBron, not everyone should be hyper fixated on counting the rings. For everyone else, there should be meaning to other things besides a championship. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but maybe once he retires the NBA can return to more normalcy and we can appreciate something that isn't judged on this LeBron Legacy scale.

The ironic part about rings culture in today's media environment is that it's not really about who wins the championship, it's about bringing down those who did not. The culture around the NBA is talking about how much the players suck and who is fraudulent etc. and the only thing that can absolve you of that toxicity is winning the title. And when you do win that title the reward is like a few months of not being **** on. It's a negative reinforcement model where the real reward in winning a title is avoiding the backlash of being one of the losers.

This is compounded by other factors like 82 games being too many. What you get is a long season that feels like a pre-season. Compare that to the NFL or EPL where every game feels massive.

Well said. The only point I take issue with is the prevalence of tanking. Sure, tanking in one form or another has always existed. My frame of reference is the structural tank, defined as follows: The organization conducts a strategic, structural teardown of an existing team, trading established veterans for draft picks and/or other players to maximize draft prospects and accumulate tradable assets over multiple years, aka "The Process." The structural tank tends to share the following characteristics, which together constitute a distinct type of tank from those that existed prior to "The Process."

1. Strategic Non-Competitiveness: Making strategic organizational decisions that prioritize future potential over current competitiveness.
2. Draft Position Focus: Strategically emphasizing obtaining high draft picks over winning, particularly draft picks in the lottery (top 14) and ideally in the top 1-5 selections.
3. Asset Accumulation: Trading established veterans for future draft picks, young players with potential, and/or cap flexibility that increases the organization’s ability to make strategic trades and other moves down the road.
4. Analytics-Driven: Adopting analytical approaches that value draft position and cap flexibility over marginal wins.
5. Timeline Shift: Focusing on development with a long-term competitive horizon rather than immediate success.
6. Public Discourse: Acknowledging and accepting tanking as a legitimate (and often preferred) team-building strategy among front offices, ownership, the media, and fans, often using terminology like "rebuild," "process," or "timeline" to frame the approach.

In other words, there was no "Process" before 2013.

 

[KqWIN]

Well said. The only point I take issue with is the prevalence of tanking. Sure, tanking in one form or another has always existed. My frame of reference is the structural tank, defined as follows: The organization conducts a strategic, structural teardown of an existing team, trading established veterans for draft picks and/or other players to maximize draft prospects and accumulate tradable assets over multiple years, aka "The Process." The structural tank tends to share the following characteristics, which together constitute a distinct type of tank from those that existed prior to "The Process."

1. Strategic Non-Competitiveness: Making strategic organizational decisions that prioritize future potential over current competitiveness.
2. Draft Position Focus: Strategically emphasizing obtaining high draft picks over winning, particularly draft picks in the lottery (top 14) and ideally in the top 1-5 selections.
3. Asset Accumulation: Trading established veterans for future draft picks, young players with potential, and/or cap flexibility that increases the organization’s ability to make strategic trades and other moves down the road.
4. Analytics-Driven: Adopting analytical approaches that value draft position and cap flexibility over marginal wins.
5. Timeline Shift: Focusing on development with a long-term competitive horizon rather than immediate success.
6. Public Discourse: Acknowledging and accepting tanking as a legitimate (and often preferred) team-building strategy among front offices, ownership, the media, and fans, often using terminology like "rebuild," "process," or "timeline" to frame the approach.

In other words, there was no "Process" before 2013.

Eh, I could not care less about establishing black and white definition of what constitutes a tank.

My point was just to say that I am losing interest to the Jazz, but it is not tied to the Jazz tanking or the reasons listed above. It's a larger issue with the NBA product as a whole: the 82 game season does not matter. My day to day interest has more to do with "does this game matter" and less to do with "are the Jazz winning these games".