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How you become a Jazz fan?

A combination of growing up in Utah and loving basketball from a really young age. Seemed like a natural fit. It probably helped that I started watching basketball regularly when I was about 9 or 10 years old and it coincided with the Jazz's back-to-back Finals trips.
 
I know we had a similar thread a few years ago, but with the turnover in posters, it's the right time to do this again. Great story, latin jazz. I think it's rare to have a person become a Jazz fan with no ties to the state or a particular player. We always gain a handful of supporters for players we draft or acquire. The Puerto Rican contingent was pretty irritating back in the Arroyo days; glad they're now gone. I imagine we'll lose some Enes supporters, just as many of the AK fans drifted away.

I've probably been a Utah fan longer than anyone else. When I was a little boy my father was a sportswriter for a long-since defunct publication (I think it was called the Utah Sporting News). He used to take me to see a handful of baseball (Salt Lake Angels), hockey (Salt Lake Golden Eagles) and basketball (Utah Stars) games. That's right...I'm old enough to remember the old ABA team which won a championship with Ron Boone as one of its key players. I was never much of a NBA fan as a little kid, but I LOVED the ABA. I would practice three point shots with my red, white and blue basketball in the driveway. The ABA had so many great teams and players; it truly was a rival of the NBA. Unfortunately the Stars folded before the leagues merged. But I did have a chance to see a young man straight out of HS lace it up for the Stars. My dad and I both KNEW he was going to be a great one. And he was: Moses Malone.

I followed Boone and Moses to the NBA, and was a fan of whatever teams those guys were on. By the time the New Orleans Jazz moved to Utah, I was no longer living in Utah, having moved to San Francisco. I got to see Rick Barry play a few times; loved his underhand FT's! I really had split loyalties at the time, because I followed GS and was listening to all the Bay Area sports talk shows. And I enjoyed the "Run TMC" days.

But having been born in Utah, it was natural to still have part of my heart there and follow the Jazz. They had some exciting players in Dantley, Darrel Griffith, etc. but it was hard to really get behind the team because they were so bad. Guess it was my mission and going to BYU that converted me full-time to the Jazz. I was lucky enough to see the very beginnings of the Stockton-Malone era, with those two and Thurl Bailey, Mark Eaton, etc.
 
Well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my *********. There really is nothing like a shorn *******. It's breathtaking -- I highly suggest you try it. Since then, my heart has been broken by this franchise more times than I care to count. C'est la vie.
 
colton said:
Moved to Utah for college in 1988, was on a mission from 1989-1991 and started watching Jazz basketball in 1991 or 1992. I've been hooked ever since, even though I lived elsewhere from 1994-2007. I think my first game in person was around 1997 or 1998, a come-back victory at the Delta Center against Vince Carter and Toronto where most of the Jazz fans left a couple of minutes before the game was over. Suckers.
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The crowd during those years was crazy right? Quite surprised by what you said. Was Oakley playing? Toronto was decent
 
latin jazz said:
The crowd during those years was crazy right? Quite surprised by what you said. Was Oakley playing? Toronto was decent
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After thinking some more I realized I was confusing the date. The first GAME I went to was around 1997-1998, but that game was at Golden State. Stockton and Malone made easy work of the Warriors. The Warriors stuck around for 3 quarters, but then the Jazz opened up a large lead in the 4th and didn't let them close.

My first game at the Delta Center would have been a few years after that. I searched the box scores at https://www.basketball-reference.com, but couldn't come up with a Toronto game that fit the description I gave. So it's possible I'm confusing two games... maybe I went to a Toronto game with Vince Carter but it was a different game I went to that had >50% of the fans leave before the Jazz came back and won the game. That seems likely, but if so I've got no idea which team that would have been. So I'll give up now on trying to make sense of my memory.
 
I was a big NBA fan from the mid-70's through the early eighties growing up in Portland, Oregon. Making me a Blazers fan. I was told, though by adults, that I looked like (with my long straight hair) and played like "Pistol Pete". I was only 8 years old but I had to find out who this guy was and then caught him playing horse in a Jazz uniform during half-time of the NBA Game of the week. I was pretty memorized by his trick shots at the time and immediately was trying them in the driveway. I always kept an eye on the Jazz for that reason and that my mom's family was from Utah. Even got Jazz hats for X-mas in Oregon from my Grandpa who had season tickets. When I ended up moving to Utah in 1984 I was a big Dr. Dunkenstein fan with the classic Nike poster, and started watching Jazz games just because of him. I slowly stopped watching the Blazers during the first couple of years as I started getting engulfed by this crazy guy on TV talking about cowhide globes. Plus I loved their attitudes and they didn't act like other NBA players, aside from AD. I swore at Karl Malone's free throws and hoped we didn't drop our leads too far when Ricky Green came out and the small white kid came in to run the point. I watched through those early Jordan years and watched us get beat by them almost everytime, but when we won, it was the talk everywhere for a week. I always liked rooting for the underdog Jazz that the media ignored. Going to those late 80's games in the Salt Palace hooked me. We slooooooooooooowly got better every year, but what was funny was as they grew in popularity I became a little more fair weather in the later 90s (just the opposite of what most do). I really didn't like what the NBA was starting to become. Stockton hooked me back with a game I KNEW they would lose against the Rockets and Barkley. I knew they would lose both Championships but I was engulfed anyway because they were the underdogs and represented the opposite of everything I disliked about what the NBA was becoming and fake flu collapsing games. After Stockton retired (much like Barry Sanders in the NFL) I felt like I had nothing to root for and no reason to watch. Aside from the occasional tickets that were given me I only occasionally caught games and could never really root for too hard for any of the others that came after as I didn't see any special players.
This changed last season when I saw this group of guys. I got the same feeling I had back in the 80s when we had a great team that everyone thought they could beat but couldn't. This time I finally paid extra for Root sports that I wouldn't do before, I'm recording all the games to PC and having a ball watching these guys get better every month. I'm happy with this core, and love every one of these guys attitudes and abilities. Love the core of Rudy, Trey, Exum, Booker, Favors, Hayward and Alec. Could care less if we add anybody else to that core as I think we have what it takes to beat everyone eventually. This is gonna be a fun ride.
 
I was a huge jason hart fan. Once the jazz aquired him I became a fan
 
I grew up in Utah, I live in Vegas now. When I was very small I had many problems at home. Basketball became my outlet from reality. Utah Jazz games were televised on one of the 9 local channels that we received. When the game was on, I was able to block out everything negative that was going on around me. Because there was no internet in those days I remember looking forward to read the sports page in the neighbors news paper that I used to steal. As I grew up I became hooked. We had a team that was feared by every team in the NBA. We had a team that wanted to be the best even though the rest of the NBA thought it was not possible. Since then NBA has always been my release and therapy.
 
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