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Non-Utah folks: how did you become a Jazz fan?

infection

infection

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We have a number of people on the forums who haven't ever visited Utah so I'm interested to hear people's conversion stories of how they ended up being fans of our perceived obscure team.
 
There used to be a computer game called Lakers vs Celtics when I was a kid.. My brother was a bulls fan, My best friend at the time was a Lakers fan (Yeah.. I know...) ..So I picked the Jazz so I could play against them without the same team.. We played the game a lot, and I started to learn more about each of the players and the team. Selecting the Jazz continued as a tradition from 'xbox inside drive'.. nba live and then the 2k based games.

Being in Australia, I could only rely on free to air TV NBA shows, and I think it was hoops magazine for information.. But it was frustrating because Jazz games weren't shown all that much til the late 90's, so it was pretty exciting to be able to see them on TV (low def sucked for basketball watching)..

Later on, as the internet came to fruition .. more information became accessible in regards to news. When multimedia took off on the internet, and NBA live became available, it was great to be able to sign up and watch all of the Jazz games. Sometimes I see empty seats and thought it would be cool to be there ..But I've never been to the US let alone Utah.

I'm also grateful that David Locke is around as an insider for the Jazz as it helps feed more news and info when I'm bored.
 
Aneurism said:
There used to be a computer game called Lakers vs Celtics when I was a kid.. My brother was a bulls fan, My best friend at the time was a Lakers fan (Yeah.. I know...) ..So I picked the Jazz so I could play against them without the same team.. We played the game a lot, and I started to learn more about each of the players and the team. Selecting the Jazz continued as a tradition from 'xbox inside drive'.. nba live and then the 2k based games.

Being in Australia, I could only rely on free to air TV NBA shows, and I think it was hoops magazine for information.. But it was frustrating because Jazz games weren't shown all that much til the late 90's, so it was pretty exciting to be able to see them on TV (low def sucked for basketball watching)..

Later on, as the internet came to fruition .. more information became accessible in regards to news. When multimedia took off on the internet, and NBA live became available, it was great to be able to sign up and watch all of the Jazz games. Sometimes I see empty seats and thought it would be cool to be there ..But I've never been to the US let alone Utah.

I'm also grateful that David Locke is around as an insider for the Jazz as it helps feed more news and info when I'm bored.
Click to expand...

Same here. Always played with the Jazz on Lakers v Celtics.

Been to SLC once on a vacation lots of years ago, but never seen them live.
 
I opened this thread thinking I'd post a quirky, endearing story about my childhood love affair with the Jazz only to see that literally every person so far has the same story of Lakers vs. Celtics I was going to post. :D
 
I started following NBA closely in 2007. And it is not really easy to follow NBA because of time difference. I was in university, having evening classes, so i was just watching games at night and wake up late. That was when Memo was allstar, and Utah made a good run. Well i was a Homer for Memo and Hedo and i didnt really like Hedo's team even though i supported them. I just started rooting for jazz, i loved the colors, blue and White and the atmosphere in the court. That was it. Once you pick a team you cant go back. Also i really liked Deron Williams back them. He was good. Too bad he couldnt be half of what CP3 is now.
 
I was a short kid growing up on the coast of Alabama in the 80's. Due to the Jazz history starting in nearby New Orleans and short John Stockton being such a stud, I went all in on Utah and have ever since.

I've been to one game. It was the season and home opener in 2001 vs Milwaukee. Stockton hit a shot to send it to OT but Ray Allen and Glen Robinson were too much. Great game and electric atmosphere.

Really cool seeing the history of guys playing LvsC. Great game. Great memories. Go Jazz.

Sent from my VS995 using JazzFanz mobile app
 
1997. 7 years old. Bulls v Jazz in the Finals and it was just something about the Jazz that made them look cooler than Michael Jordan. The mountain jerseys. Karl Malone whispering whatever he was whispering at the FT line, John Stockton being an emotionless badass, and Chris Morris' face made me crack up. Here I am today a diehard Jazz fan like no other.
 
Grew up in Toronto, since I was 5 I rooted for the Jazz from 1988 onward. As a kid I kept seeing them winning and loved Stockton and Malone, boy they killed it back in the day. Still a Jazz fan, always and forever!
 
I'm a butler bulldog fan who has followed since Hayward drafted. Bought NBA league pass and have watched every jazz game since

Actually got to see a game in SLC when I was on a business trip
 
When I was a kid every year I'd watch the NCAA Tournament and pick one player who I'd follow when he got into the NBA.

One year I just happened to pick Jeff Hornacek. For years (pre-internet of course) I'd follow his stats in the newspaper box scores.

For whatever reason he was the one player I stuck with. He was traded to Utah just around the time NBA League Pass started so I decided to give it a shot and buy the package. And that was that.
 
Grew up in south Texas and I joined my first city league team when I was 6. My team happened to be the Utah Jazz so I became a Utah Jazz fan.
 
Like a few others, when I was a little kid, I played lakers vs celtics on the compute. This was the late 80's at the time.
I always wanted to play with the team who had the tallest player in the league.
This just happened to be mark eaton at 7'4" I'm pretty sure.
So with the Jazz having the tallest player, I always played with them and my undying love for them grew from this.
Sad but true....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Was a Rondo and Celtics fan then when we drafted Exum and got Joe, I started following the Jazz, for some reasons all the players names and their tendencies just stuck, i wanted to know everything about them and quite soon a missed open 3 or a potentially great assist un-converted fired me up and i knew the cletics meant nothing to me. As an Aussie, I would love us to get Bogut and Patty Mills yet even if we trade Joe and Dante i wouldn't love the jazz any less. 4 hats and 4 jerseys later here i am planning a Trip to Utah in 2 to 3 years time to coincide with a home game stretch while also working it out to see a few away games when im in diffrent parts of the country. I would of been there for playoffs but I've got a 15 month old so it has to wait a few years. Sometimes i call my wife Robyn and ask do you need some G-time just to trigger her, thats not going to fly if we lose Hayward. I'm really scared he his going to leave, i hate how the whole team is literally held to ransom by his decision.

Sent from my SM-N920I using JazzFanz mobile app
 
Half our fan base exists because of a crappy DOS computer game lmao. Game should get its own banner in the Delta Center.

"using your expiring assets to add depth to the squad rocks the boat too violently and may destroy our delicately balanced beamed cakk bakk" - me
 
Like others, I used to play with the Jazz on Lakers vs Celtics in the very early 90s. The video resolution of the game was bad. I knew nothing about the Jazz or about NBA basketball, but Stockton was very quick and, hence, a very distinct player; Eaton was a giant and Malone quick for a big player. Then, in 1992, came out a game called Tecmo NBA Basketball and I was really hooked. I kept playing with the Jazz. A few years later, circa 1995, I begun to collect basketball cards. I think they were not available here in Brazil before that time - or perhaps I just did not notice them. By collecting the cards, I noticed how good - and consistent - Stockton and Malone stats were. At the time, NBA games became more often available here, on cable, and I just begun to track the Jazz. I remember rooting for them during the 1995 playoffs, when the team was eliminated in the first round by the Rockets. From that point onwards, I begun to buy magazines like The Sporting News - which always published a preview of the season. I tracked the Jazz through the Brazilian newspapers also. I remember that when Stockton broke the all-time assist record, a short note was published. Around 1997, I begun to have access to the NBA.com website and to the scores and stats and that solidified my affection to the Jazz. I remember being a little upset that Stockton was not leading the league in assists for the first time in a decade. During that season, I begun reading The Deseret News and The Salt Lake Tribune online almost daily, a habit that I kept for around ten years. I used to tape all the Jazz games in TV. I did so from the 1996-97 season through Stockton retirement. I still have most of the tapes. Overall, it has been more than twenty years following the Jazz and I have no complaints. Stockton, Malone and Sloan were examples of hard work and no-nonse and were, to some extent, my role models during my youth years. Besides, my English developed quickly due to so much exposition to the language. Despite the Jazz never winning, I have no complaints.

P.S.: I follow the discussions at this site since slightly after his creation, circa 2005, if I remember correctly.
 
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I was born in 1975, first heard that a league like NBA exists in 1988, when Atlanta Hawks played 3 exhibition games against the Soviet Union team. I remember a line in a local newspaper regarding whether USSR would win or not - USSR lost big against Bucks during the tour in the USA; however Bucks lost to Hawks and Hawks lost to Celtics in the Playoffs therefore the chances are quite slim. USSR won the last exhibition game.

After that i was briefly a Phoenix Suns fan - maybe because they had good white players (Hornacek, Majerle and Chambers) and even back then for some odd reason when Suns faced the Lakers in the conference finals and lost 0:4, i could not root for Lakers. Although i wanted the same glasses that Jabbar and Worthy wore :-)

I discovered the Lakers vs Celtics game around 1992 and when my father worked at Siberian oil fields with americans during the 1992-1994 then one of them brought me the Hoops magazine. Then i discovered that John Stockton is little bit similar to Tiit Sokk. After that i played also with Jazz whenever possible. Won the championship with the hardest difficulty in NBA Live 97, 97, 2001 and 2004 :-)

However, the first Jazz related forum (where i was a member) was Jazzhoops. For some reason they kicked away most of the members around 2005 or 2006 and i had to choose Jazzfanz.
 
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