By Moray
Pickering
Saturday, February 23rd, 2002
One thing that I have always found strange about the NBA is that the Utah
Jazz are so unpopular amongst followers of professional sports. They are
everything that most sports fans profess that they want their teams to be
like, yet not that many people seem to like or understand them. I, however,
am not one of these people - I love the Utah Jazz and everything about
them.
Perhaps it is easier for me to profess my love for the Jazz as I live in
England and therefore I am somewhat detached from the ridicule and humiliation
that fans of the Jazz might receive if they lived in Philadelphia or Los
Angeles. My geographical remoteness also means that I am unable to feel any
great connection with a team, so therefore I am able to enjoy a basketball
game without really caring about who wins it. This means that I can watch
a team in a different way than most sports fans living in the USA can.
I am not trying to claim that I am the only person who understands just how
good the Jazz are - I am certain that that is not true, but think about it,
when was the last time that you read or heard anyone talk about them in the
national media? They seem to have become America's forgotten team and to
be honest, it is not hard to understand why America has found it so easy
to forget about them.
They play in a city that very few non-Mormon people have visited. They have
never won a Championship, yet they have, in recent times, never been a bad
team and are always there or thereabouts come playoff time. Although they
posses two of the greatest players in NBA history, neither have ever become,
nor really wanted to become, superstars. Therefore, it would seem that on
the surface, there is very little to get excited about. Yet delve beneath
the surface and you will find a team full of worthwhile things.
One of the main problems the Jazz have in attracting the attention of the
public at large is that they have not changed all that much since the mid-'80s.
Today's society requires constant change and transformation to keep in interested
in something and without that change people will soon lose interest in somebody
or something. In this respect, the Jazz have been a victim of their own success
and perhaps if things had gone seriously wrong for them sometime in the last
15 years and they had had to make big changes, people would have been interested
in them again.
Think about it this way, the Los Angeles Clippers have been hovering around
.500 all season and have been one of the hottest stories of the year, but
would anyone care about them if they had been hovering around .500 for the
last ten years? Of course not, the Clipper's situation has only got attention
because of their past record of being downright awful, just as the Bulls
are a story these days because of their rapid fall from grace.
Let's face it, today's world is dominated by the media and if NBA and Sports
Illustrated do not deem the Utah Jazz interesting enough to feature them,
they might as well not exist.
You cannot really blame the Jazz themselves for their situation; they have
simply had no need to change anything major for quite some time. They have
the best point guard in the history of the game, one of the best power forwards
in the history of the game, and one of the most respected coaches in the
league.
As long as these three stay healthy and motivated then the Jazz will be just
fine. Sure, they aren't likely to be hoisting any championship banners in
the near future, but that doesn't really matter. How many teams really have
a legitimate shot at the title these days? The Lakers, the Spurs, and perhaps
the Kings, the rest are just hoping to have a good run in the playoffs.
The Jazz are one of the most enjoyable teams to watch in this league, as
far as I am concerned. Where as many teams these days seem to display an
alarming lack of togetherness and purpose, it always seems that the Jazz
know exactly what they are going to do on each possession. There is something
tremendously soothing about watching John Stockton and Karl Malone run a
pick-and-roll over and over again. Even though the opposition knows exactly
what they are going to do, they still cannot stop them.
Perhaps one of the things that prevent the Jazz getting more airtime is their
lack of athletic dunks and circus show plays. Now, I enjoy watching a player
take off from the free throw line and throw it down hard, but too often,
these plays are surrounded by bad jump shots and loose turnovers.
John Stockton isn't going to take off from the free throw line any time soon,
but then again he isn't going to mis-read a screen or mis-time a pass, also.
Karl Malone may have lost some of that explosive presence around the rim,
but he can score more points and be more effective overall with his almost
unstoppable mid-range jumpshot.
The Utah Jazz play like every coach in sports wants their team to play like.
They fulfill their potential every night, they execute set plays to perfection,
their two best players know that they will share most of the burden each
night, but then again, they aren't afraid to share it a bit and each player
knows exactly what there role is and how to carry out that role. If you were
to produce a training manual on how to construct a winning team, you would
need look no further than Salt Lake City.
The Jazz have another major thing going for them - they are the most human
team in the NBA. By that, I mean they are the only team in the league who
you can look at their players and think they aren't all that different to
the everyday people you meet in your life. Sure, they may be able to play
basketball better than most people do on the planet, but aside from that,
they are just normal people.
You get the feeling that if you met John Stockton on the street, you could
just have a normal conversation with him. Could you say the same thing about
Shaq or Michael Jordan or even some third rate mini-star whose sense of his
own worthwhile has been vastly inflated by years of over-hype in the media?
Perhaps that is why the Jazz are like they are, none of them have ever really
been hyped up to any great extent and therefore they do not think of themselves
as anything different to the fans that come to watch them.
Some may find that kind of situation boring. It is often nice to go to a
sporting event and see sportsmen and women act like being from another planet
- it helps add to idolized perception that we have of pro athletes.
Maybe people do not really like to watch the Jazz because they don't want
to see sporting stars as real people, they prefer to see them as demi-gods
who exist in some completely different world filled with Bentleys and mansions.
Personally, though, I prefer to watch a bunch of guys playing the game I
love in the way that makes me love it and that is why I love to watch the
Jazz.
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