We moved to Utah in '89, shortly after I had turned 4, from the Bay Area. It was either the '89-'90 season or the '90-'91 season (awaiting text confirmation), my dad had bought season tickets when they were in the Salt Palace. They were pretty good seats, right behind the Jazz's basket. There were three seats and I think a number of the times I went, I didn't actually have a ticket. There was a heavy dude who would dance higher up in the arena during time outs (a fan). I remember walking in one of the tunnels next to Mark Eaton. Maybe starting in kindergarten or first grade, we had a large, open living room and we put up a 6' basketball hoop in it, so during basketball season I'd get excited and play when there were games on. Went to numerous games at the Delta Center. I remember seeing Rodman when he was on the Pistons and my dad liking him. Eventually my dad started selling off the tickets as we had some financial issues and they were great seats, so there was a gap from like '94 or '95 up past the finals years that we didn't go (in those seats). I think my dad made some good money on selling the finals tickets, though, but I'll have to ask him how much. I remember my dad being really pumped about us trading for Hornacek. I remember the years we'd be in the WCF (before going to the finals) and feeling like we're pretty close. The Jazz banners they'd send out in the Tribune and Deseret News that people would tape in their home windows or cars. I remember being disappointed watching us lose game 7 to Seattle in the '96 WCF. Then the finals years. My parents and a couple siblings were in the family room watching for "the shot." I was in 6th grade. It wasn't "cool" to like the Jazz then and all the cool kids liked the Bulls, so liking the Jazz was going against the grain. A lot of disappointment that summer when we lost, thinking we were going to win. I was going to write a letter to Scott Layden detailing who we should trade for. I got really pumped up when we traded for Rony Seikaly and was excited to watch some of the end of the regular season games, but then... you know. Heart breaking watching the waived off Eisley three, Ron Harper's two that was ruled good (I'm pretty sure he still has the ball in his hands as I type). The lockout season took a bit of wind out of the sails, but it was also a weird time. I had two older brothers that left on missions, my parents had gotten back together, and I was doing the kind of stupid stuff at 13-14 that people usually end up doing in high school, but the '99 playoffs brought me back in. I think I watched the whole Sacramento series at my friend's house. Damn I hated Vlade and his hook shot. I'm pretty sure that series ended with a Vlade hook shot that hit the front of the rim, so that was a relief. But then we got beat by Portland, which was hard to swallow because, in my mind, Jordan was gone and now it was ours to lose. And lose we did. That summer, I remember being really bummed that Eisley left (and somewhat contentiously, at least with KFAN [but screw those guys, anyway]). I didn't know who Donyell Marshall was. We had drafted DeShawn and the hype of taking a high school guy, like that meant he was going to be really, really good. It was somewhere during this season where I got really into the Jazz, watching every single game, and posting on here. We were in that first round series where Dirk blew up. Had to watch when Calvin Booth's layup put us on summer vacation. I spent the entire summer working construction for my dad and listening to KFAN. I used to fax in fake trade rumors and, for some reason having a fax machine gave credibility, because they would read them on air. I even had a couple that got read on air and then made their way back to being posted on here (or JazzHoops) and that was always amusing. A 16 year old with too much time on his hands. The 2001 draft was the first draft I got really into and I, like many others, was pissed that we drafted Raul Lopez. I was pissed when I saw Tony Parker doing good, but then there was always the spin. The spin that the Spurs were actually planning on taking Lopez (before we took him), then he blew an ACL, we got to JPG updates of him working on his shooting while sitting in a chair. Please see my signature, but we all bought the hype eventually, even though his initial draft selection was widely panned by absolutely everybody, except a couple random people who were probably just contrarians. We also had Kirilenko who was rumored to come over and was really being hyped up. Had my heart ripped out by being defeated by the Kings and Vlade hitting a Steph Curry distance three with the clock winding down. I was thrilled with the Borchardt pick. I loved Pavlovic. Before I left for my mission, I envisioned this lineup of Lopez / Someone / Kirilenko / Some shot blocker / Borchardt. My ideal was Emeka Okafor but we ended up performing too well. I attended every game that season (Jerry's 42 win season) up until February 4 when I went into the MTC. My parents sent me news articles. Eventually I got out on my mission and had internet access on P-days and I would catch up on box scores. I was still lurking here. Followed Jazz scores off of an 800 number that would give updates and news. I was absolutely LIVID that we protected JARRON COLLINS in the expansion draft and left Pavlovic unprotected. Galaxy brain move. Nobody was taking Collins. I had to call an old guy in the ward I was in to read through his news paper to tell me the names of the people taken in the expansion draft. Got nervous as he slowly scanned through the paper and, of course, the Bobcats were going to take Pavlovic.
This next part was actually pretty funny... there are some details that I'm forgetting, but there was something I was wanting the Jazz to do in the draft (it's irrelevant now) but they didn't end up doing it. It was the year we took Snyder and Humphries (and Pavel Podkolzin who we traded). My companion was from norther Nevada. He had this girl that he had been talking about for a while that he really wanted to date when he got back. He would rave about her a lot. Then right before the draft, he found out she was marrying a basketball player from UNR. I was pissed because we didn't take whoever it was (really wish I could remember) and he was pissed about "losing" this girl. It was actually Kirk Snyder that this girl married. I told him that, isn't it ironic that both of us are pissed about something where the common theme is Kirk Snyder. He wasn't very happy with that comment. We signed Boozer and Memo which I was pretty excited about and thought we could have a good upcoming year, but it became more difficult to follow that season that I don't remember a whole lot other than maybe some injuries.. Anyway, Raul Lopez blew out his knee again, Borchardt was dead or something, but Kirilenko ended up being an all-star. By the time the draft lottery rolled around, I remember being pissed because we dropped a couple spots. I hadn't been able to look at draft stuff but knew there were two different point guards. We ended up drafting DWill and the rest of the time on my mission I don't remember following much because I was getting ready to come home. I did laugh when I saw that we ended up trading 3 of our first round picks from the prior couple years to get Ostertag back. I ended up coming home February 10 of 2006 and watched the close of that season. I really liked what I saw from DWill and thought Boozer was looking pretty good, even though most people thought his close to the season was an aberration and laughed at the suggestion that he'd be a 20/10 guy. In May I moved down to Orem and the guy I really wanted in the draft was JJ Redick, who I thought would be great next to DWill. Never really got all that excited about Brewer. I actually really, really liked the Derek Fisher trade. Not because I thought he would be a great player but because he would be a good veteran presence and because, with health, I thought we had a really good team. Ended up moving to Provo in the fall and watched a lot of the games. Ended up starting to date my wife at the end of December. We were engaged by the end of January, and we got married during the first round of the playoffs the day after I took my last final. I remember trying to follow the score of one of the games with the Rockets on my slow-*** data (pre-smart phone days) and kept refreshing it until I saw we won. Watched the GSW series with my wife. Knew that if we beat SAS, we would win the title. It felt so good to be back in the WCF because it felt like forever, which is pretty funny because, as of that point, it had been 9 years since we were last in the WCF but as of this year, it's been 17 years since we've been to the WCF. The following season, we ended up trading for Korver, who I was thrilled about because we hadn't really had a shooter on the team since Hornacek retired (oh, and remember all those rumors about Hornacek not having submitted his retirement papers so every year around the playoffs people kept saying Hornacek was going to come out of retirement? That's one of the best/worst/dumbest Jazz lores). But Korver was mismanaged and we should have embraced the three more. The next three years were uneventful because we made no changes to the roster and each season saw us heading on a early vacation because we kept meeting the Lakers in the playoffs. Larry died during this time and KOC and Greg were at the helm and I always said they were passively driving the franchise into a rebuild, which they did. The Sloan vs. Deron nonsense was a compete false dichotomy and was the result of those two asshats (Greg and KOC) doing absolutely nothing for three years and it came to a head with Jerry and DWill going at it. Jerry quits, DWill gets traded, then we get a bunch of hype. Oh, I remember the 2009-2010 season. We were in Missouri during my first year of medical school. We couldn't afford league pass but we did have TNT. I stayed up late to watch the game against Cleveland that was nationally televised and got to watch Sundiata Gaines hit that shot. That was a real feel-good moment and perhaps one of the better memories. But man, that whole core 4 stuff... yikes. I'll just skip over that nonsense. I was hopeful that we'd be a bit more competitive when we got Mo Williams back and had Jefferson, but that season ended up being dumb and it was ridiculous to choose getting swept by the Spurs in the playoffs.
We ended up moving to Texas for 4 years in June of 2013. Our house wasn't done and we were living out of a hotel room for a week with our (then) two kids. Trey Burke was the guy I wanted most from that draft and, at least at the time, watching that from the hotel room and having that play out was a real good-vibes night for me, even though it didn't turn out too well (but we got Rudy that night). I bought league pass each year we were in Texas, but ended up having every Texas team games blacked out (which accounted for 15% of the season, and we were between Austin and Waco so we weren't even in any of those markets. The last year we were there, I was so happy to be back in the playoffs. Rudy had exploded. I remember being super bummed he got hurt in that first LA game but then we ended up winning. My oldest (who I think was 9 at the time) stayed up late to watch Joe Johnson sink that buzzer beater. That was a good memory. But then we got buzzsawed by the Warriors (I won't get in to my hate for the Warriors, stemming from their tanking season of screwing us on that pick that, had we had that plus not chose to be swept by San Antonio, could have made a play for Lillard). Then the Hayward fiasco and I thought we were set back a bunch. Had a great first season with Donovan. Though I've always been active on JF, it was especially over that season that I got REALLY active in the trade deadline thread because I thought we should have traded our draft pick (who ended up being Grayson Allen) for Mirotic because it was apparent that the window was open NOW and that we shouldn't wait. But DL like to "keep the powder dry" for a few years. I ended up going on a streak of making some pretty epic game threads. Those actually took a really long time and ate away at too much that I had to sacrifice to produce an elaborate and creative game thread multiple times per week. But then we had a lot of disappointments since then. I won't get in to too many details because they're fairly recent and we've discussed them all in the past couple years. But when we traded Rudy, that really did take a lot of sail out my winds. I'd had concerns about Ryan. Was he truly a Jazz fan? I really wonder if he was a Jordan and Bulls fan during the finals years. His approach to our history seems fairly disconnected. He had previously wanted to buy the Suns. Though he has some personal connection to the Jazz, and it's apparent that he followed the Jazz through the DWill era (it's funny because all of those "too cool for the Jazz" kids when we were in the finals then became Jazz fans under the DWill era), I do wonder if he views the Jazz more as a team and less as who the Jazz are as a staple of the community. All of the leaks about possible name changes highlight that for me in my mind. A lot of really long term faces in the franchise have been pushed out. I'm not one for maintaining dumb traditions that are dumb, but there's a certain reality and shared history of who we are as the Utah Jazz and there's a certain amount of tribalism in professional sports that I think is appropriate. Hiring Ainge is challenging for me. It's childish, but I really feel that your competitive edge should have you holding some childish biases that aren't logical. It makes me have too many questions about where his loyalty lies. It's like seeing a bunch of Jazz people wearing Jordan gear. Umm... what? Hello? History? Yes. We're tribal. Embrace it. The Rudy issue, for me, kind of epitomized Jazz identity. Work hard, play defense, don't get the recognition, but go out there and show people up who counted you out. The time between the Rudy trade and the Donovan trade was rough, because, on the flip side, I felt that the Donovan issue was almost the exact antithesis of Jazz identity, but getting distracted by something shiny because it scores a lot of points, looks flashy, and is perceived as cool, but ultimately isn't going to get you where you need to go. But hey, it was exciting, right! Donovan was traded so it provided some reassurance, but the past couple years has been the absolute least engaged I've been in the Jazz since forever. I'm not sure what this franchise's identity is. I'm just waiting to wake up one day to news that Ryan has decided to rename the team to something "real kewl" and "representative of Utah" but then choose something incredibly stupid that has absolutely nothing to do with Utah like Yeti. The yellow and black jerseys? "Yeah, we have a confusing history and color palate, so we'll add to that the worst color scheme on the planet."
It's been a rough couple years. But it's not all bad. The distance I've had from the franchise has allowed me to make better connections with those around me, being more present with my wife and kids, not being worried or distracted about the next game, etc. It's allowed me to focus on getting things done for work, making money, and parlaying that into some incredible memories with my kids. They'll only be young once. I wish the Jazz could be a better part of that connection with my kids, that they could have those shared memories, or that when the Jazz ever win a championship, one of my kids could stream the game from my grave site like that one Cubs fan did, but ultimately the franchise is not in that position and I'm standing at a bit of a distance while I make sure all of the other essentials are done.
tl;dr being a Jazz fan sucks.
