The Utah Jazz are a popular team in the NBA; this was especially true back in the 1990s when the squad was led by two superstar players in John Stockton and Karl Malone. These two players brought a lot of excitement to Salt Lake City and almost brought their city an NBA championship.
Karl Malone and John Stockton led their franchise to back-to-back NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998, falling both times to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls.
Even though the Jazz never won a title, they have remained competitive for most of the seasons after Stockton and Malone left the franchise. The one knock against the Utah Jazz as a franchise is their name…
The music genre of Jazz originated in African American communities during the late 19th century. It also started in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Now, Utah is a predominantly white-populated state today, and it was certainly that way when Jazz was founded, as well. In fact, Utah is not known for Jazz music at all. So, why does the team from Utah go by the name the Jazz?
The reason is that the franchise originated in New Orleans in 1974 and played in New Orleans until June 8, 1979, when they relocated to Utah. This leads to the main topic of our article… Why did the New Orleans Jazz move their franchise to Utah?
The New Orleans Jazz Move To Utah
The New Orleans Jazz were founded by a group led by businessmen Fred Rosenfeld and Sam Battistone, and they paid $6.15 million for the franchise. One of the first orders of business by the New Orleans Jazz front office was making a deal with the Atlanta Hawks to bring Pete Maravich to the team.
The Jazz would play five seasons in New Orleans, and they would miss the playoffs in each season. The best record in those five seasons came in the 1977-78 season when they finished with a 39-43 record.
Despite the bad records every season, the team’s attendance wasn’t bad, but they had issues with the arena they played in. The franchise initially played at the Loyola University Fieldhouse, and it held only 6,500 fans.
Also, there was a safety issue in the arena, where the players would fall off the court and into the stands since the court was raised. The NBA eventually made the Jazz staff put a net around the court to prevent the players from falling and injuring themselves.
The Jazz would move to the Louisiana Superdome, which held an incredible 73,432 fans since it was initially a football dome. Despite this new seating capacity, the Jazz felt like they were treated differently than the NFL’s New Orleans Saints.
On top of this negative feeling, the New Orleans Jazz weren’t making a profit, and at the time, the state of Louisiana had an 11 percent amusement tax the team had to pay. This led to owner Sam Battistone looking for a new, cheaper home for his franchise.
Battistone settled on moving his team to Salt Lake City in Utah. The city of Utah used to be home to the Stars in the ABA from 1970 to 1976, so the city was excited to receive a new franchise, this time in the NBA.
So, on June 8, 1979, the NBA Board of Governors officially approved the Jazz’s move, and Utah had their new basketball team. As mentioned earlier, the Jazz have never won a championship in either New Orleans or Utah.
As the franchise recently rebuilds itself and with the number of draft picks they have received from trading stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, maybe they can put together a championship-contending team in the near future. It’s safe to say the fans in Utah would love to see that.
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