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How did you become a Jazz fan?

....Stockton and Malone duo/pick and roll....Sloan insisting on open shots and not one on one....simple as that. I have no vested interest in Utah or Salt Lake City. But when you had two of the smartest, fundamentally sound players in the History of the NBA playing on the same team in their prime....it was something to behold!
 
I was not really into basketball until I was about 13 years old. At 14 I had a chance to be a ball boy for the Jazz for about 5 home games and a few practices. That was the year they drafted Karl Malone. I have a Griffith jersey signed by several Jazz players including Malone and Stockton, Ricky Green, Griffith and a couple others. Being that close to the game, close enough to hear the contact when they hit each other or hear the snap of the ball going through the net and of course hear the trash talk and watching them at practice and getting autographs from them and hearing a few start calling you by name even after just a few games and practices (Stockton was one...he was good to the ball boys), well then I was hooked. Been a fan ever since.
 
Wait, you like the Cowboys? No wonder I always grate my teeth reading your posts.

We could never be friends in real life.
 
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the kid next door's father worked in advertising with some kind of connection to the Wirtz family - they owned the Blackhawks and Bulls. The Bulls were a pretty new franchise then, and he'd have tickets for these games and bring us along. My friend's Dad's favorite player was Jerry Sloan, so I guess that's why he became my favorite player as well. (OK, him and Tom Boerwinkle whom I liked because his name sounded like Bullwinkle). Then later Pete Maravich became my favorite player (I think because he looked like one of my favorite teachers at the time) so I became a fan of the New Orleans Jazz. Who then became the Utah Jazz and eventually made Jerry Sloan their head coach. So I sort of felt it was karma or something the way everything had come full circle.

As a life-long (for the most part) Chicagoan, I've always been a Bulls fan, but when they played the Jazz in '97 and '98 I was hoping the Jazz would win at least one of those years since the Bulls had already won plenty of championships. Except for the Yankees, I've never been particularly fond of sports dynasties at all. So I felt it was time to let someone else win, and since the Jazz had Jerry Sloan as their coach, I felt it would still be a credit to Chicago in a sense. Probably sounds dumb to some of you...

Plus my youngest son was a big John Stockton fan.

Anyhow, I just enjoy watching basketball, at any level - I always have. So I was totally entranced by the Illini teams in '88-'89 and 03'-'05 and began following the Jazz more closely once they drafted Deron, and then the year they added Dee Brown and Roger Powell. And the internet and cable certainly make it easier to follow an out-of-area team.


(and neither here nor there, but those early Bulls teams also had a player by the name of Bob Boozer, that name reminded me of Bozo so he was another favorite player - - and I'm sure there's something subliminal about why I've liked Carlos Boozer since his days at Duke...)
 
I became a Jazz fan...

Well it's complicated. Every story is, right? I grew up both a Jazz & Bulls fan. My family was from Chicago, so that made it easier cheering for Chicago. It didn't hurt that Michael Jordan was putting on the Greatest Show on Earth.

But I also liked the Jazz. They were a very close second and since both Utah and Chicago were in two different conferences and didn't meet until the late-90s, it was pretty reasonable to root on both teams.

I even cheered for Utah in home games against the Bulls and for the Bulls when they were at home. A weird system, but a fair one, I thought.

Of course, it was easier back then to follow the Jazz because they were the local team. The internet was still in its infancy and all the games, well many of the games, were on the television. So as the decade progressed, I slowly changed my allegiance fully to the Jazz. When Michael Jordan retired from the game the first time, I pretty much dropped my support of the Bulls and invested it solely into the Jazz.

I was intrigued by his return, even have some Chicago newspapers from then that my dad's cousin sent me in the mail - but overall, it wasn't enough to trump the growth of my Jazz fandom.

When the two met in the NBA Finals, it wasn't really a complicated choice - I chose Utah.

Wise choice, right? I'm starting to wonder...

But the overall reason for my decision was influence. I was the only non-fully invested (I feel dirty saying those words) Jazz fan in the family. I watched a lot of games with my grandparents, especially my grandma, and that certainly rubbed off on me, especially when Jordan was gone from 1994-1995.

Coming out of the 90s, I was probably more invested than I would have ever liked. Too many heartbreaking losses. Too many disappointments. Too many seasons ending without the ultimate prize.
 
France, summer 1992, back then you couldn't catch one single image of NBA broadcasted on French tv, or maybe just a recap of the Finals on a paying channel. So I had no idea of what was going on for any team or any player. I turn on my TV and the Dream Team is playing in the Barcelona Olympics. I immediately wonder "who the hell is this little white guy they picked along with Jordan, Magic, Bird and co ???". Never stopped following the Jazz since then, and I even came to Salt Lake in 2002 to see John Stockton play before he retires.
 
I grew up in vermont and played basketball in high school. When Stocktan and Malone left the team every NBA expert in the country said Utah was going to be the worst team in the NBA, but I said "NO!". I saw the potential in Kirilenko to be something new an unique and the work ethic in Matt Harpring to pull together a strong season. So as the season went on I laughed at all my fellow basketball friends as my bold and mocked prediction followed the Jazz to their 42-40 season. After that Jazz has been plucked from the strings of my heart very since.
 
Moved to utah when I was 3.. my dad was a VP for salt palace and than for the Delta center when it opened.. rest is history
 
KrazeeEyezKilla said:
Malone on the cover of SI...Bigger, Stronger, Faster...or something to that effect.
Click to expand...

1107_mid.jpg
 
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