Basketball fanatics Tim Ormond, Kris Chatelain and Steve Furse loved the intimacy of those Rocky Mountain Revue games at Salt Lake Community College, when NBA hopefuls and future stars laced up each summer for years.
They were up close and personal for highlight reel plays by Kevin Durant and Deron Williams. They angered the family of former Seattle Supersonics center Robert Swift with their heckling and made future Memphis star Zach Randolph chuckle with the same.
"The gym was just so small," recalled Ormond, one of the thousands of people at EnergySolutions Arena this week for the NBA's return to Salt Lake City summers. "You could hear everything everyone was saying."
But after witnessing a bigger, better revival to the event, Ormond and his friends might find themselves back in that smaller gym next year.
Just for one more summer.
"Before we got this cemented in, we already had a contract in place for an event next year [at ESA]," Jazz President Randy Rigby said. "We've got to now find a home for next year's summer league. For a one-year interim situation, we may be going back to SLCC or we might go somewhere else for one year. We'll make it work, and then we'll be back permanently for the future."
For Rigby and other Jazz officials, that may be the only real hiccup they've faced since winning their fight to bring these games back to Utah. Announced attendance for this week's two double-headers has topped more than 19,000 — a turnout that has justified to Jazz officials their work in an eight-year battle.
"It reiterated what we've always felt — that our fans love NBA basketball, they love the Jazz and they want something to do during the summer months," Rigby said. "… Even though it's been an eight-year hiatus, they've come back."
The Rocky Mountain Revue ran for more than 20 years, expanding from a four-team pro-am at East High School to a major NBA summertime outpost, before being shuttered in 2008 when NBA officials threw their weight behind the summer league competitions in Las Vegas.
That's also when the Jazz started fighting to bring them back.
"We've never given up on it in eight years," Rigby said.
After the better part of a decade, Utah got its chance.
New NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed an interest in creating more summertime product for the league. Meanwhile, the appetite around the league for more talent evaluation, perhaps spurred on in part by the rise of the D-League, created an opportunity for the Jazz to pounce, Rigby said.
The result is playing out this week.
Utah's four-team tournament, which includes the Jazz, the Boston Celtics, the Philadelphia 76ers and the San Antonio Spurs, has been an appetizer and a launching pad for the larger Las Vegas tournament, which will feature 24 teams when it kicks off Friday afternoon.
"We didn't want to undermine it," Rigby said. "We felt like we could complement it."
Fans, players and coaches, meanwhile, are complimenting it.
"It was great," Celtics assistant coach Jay Larranaga said after Monday's exhibition with the Jazz. "It felt like some-sort of regular season game. The crowd was great."
