Willingly, I went to this game. 

On a random rainy Wednesday night in March, a school night mind you, I willingly paid for tickets to watch the 28-35 Utah Jazz against the 30-32 Chicago Bulls. 

Willingly. 

We Jazz fans are a different breed. Come hell or highwater, come blowout wins or losses, we show up and root, root, root for the home team. A game before my adventure into the Delta Center, the out of the play-in and maybe out of the draft lottery Jazz took on an even worse NBA squad, the 9-53 Washington Wizards in Salt Lake City, the first game at home after an extended East Coast road trip. And the Jazz fans showed out! 

Speaking of this, the great Andy Larsen wrote for Salt Tribune on what makes Jazz fans stand out. He said:

“I’m not sure Jazz fans have gotten enough credit for just how good they are. The team has never won a championship, and this is their second consecutive season of tanking at the end to get a draft pick. They have no superstars, and their best players aren’t playing. It’s a weekday, and they’re playing the worst team in the league. Not only that, they were losing. And yet, the Delta Center was full. Loud, too. It was their 281st consecutive sellout, according to the Jazz. I think there are at least 25 markets in the NBA where that game doesn’t sell out. There are probably 29 fan bases that would have been less engaged. But Utah is different — for whatever reason, fans are still showing up in a major way. That’s special.”

This 2023-2024 season, I’ve written the highs and lows of being a Jazz fan, as we’ve lived a 7-16 start and then a 14-4 streak. With these seasons of ups and downs, or both like now, it’s an emotional roller coaster that straps the heart for a wild ride. A life lived Jazz fan, I argue, is a life lived tortured. It’s my thesis and it’s what will be etched on my tombstone. 

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I took my seven-year-old boy, Kai, to the game that Wednesday night.

We had Culvers for dinner, sitting at a tall booth and talking about dragons in the books he had been reading lately. After parking for $20 to support West High School’s Latino’s In Action club, we walked to the Delta Center hand-in-hand while I told him the plot of The Marvels, the latest Marvel movie his mom and I had been watching in increments. 

We got into the arena with time to spare, walking around to take it all in and buying him a purple, youth Jazz hat that he would wear at school from now on. We got to our seats, stood respectfully for the anthem, cheered wildly for our favorite players (his is JC-double zero, so those cheers would have to wait), and sat up high in the upper bowl for this regular season game with zero future implications. 

When I was a boy, I told him, when I was your age, the Chicago Bulls were the best team in the NBA. Six times they won the championship, and for two of them do you know who they beat? You guessed it, the Utah Jazz. My team. We were so good, so close, but the Bulls beat us both times and we were never the NBA Champion with the trophy. 

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Becoming a fan is an interesting situation because it happens and it sticks with you for the rest of your forever. How does this attachment begin – geography, family, access, peer pressure, winning, stars? What might get lost in gaining fandom is that it all begins with a choice. There’s no force, no coercion. Willingly, I chose to become a Jazz fan.

Most everyone knows my fandom story. I lived in Oregon until I was 10 and loved basketball for nearly every minute of that childhood. While I may have been too young to fully appreciate Clyde Drexler or Cliff Robinson, I did go to the Rose Garden and saw Arvydas Sabonis, Rasheed Wallace, Brian Grant, and Damon Stoudamire. There was even the Scottie Pippen year, Bonzi Wells, and the coming-of-age with Jermaine O’Neale. Yet, my fandom didn’t translate geographically as I found a connection with Stockton-to-Malone instead. 

I often wonder what could have happened if I were born into the San Antonio Spurs family, witnessing legends and rings, and then legends and rings, and then another cycle of legends and rings, and perhaps an upcoming round of legends and rings forthcoming. And, if fandom isn’t connected to location, why didn’t I just choose to be a Spurs fan. Or the Lakers. Or the Celtics. Or the Suns. Or those Bulls. Why did my 1990s and 2000s foster a love of the Jazz into all my-being that would translate time and be etched to my name for the rest of my life? 

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Instead, here I was watching the lowly Bulls outscore the home team 63-54 in the first half.

The Bulls were lighting gasoline on fire, hitting seven threes in the first quarter. Before the halftime buzzer, they had eclipsed their season average of 11.6 (good for 25th in the league, by the way). Coby White, point guard, was the best player on the court at times. By the time the game ended, he hit seven threes by himself while scoring 25 points on 9/15 shooting. Bulls fans a row behind us couldn’t help but joke, Kobe, everytime Coby would shoot. “His middle name is actually JellyBean Bryant,” one of the dudes said, “so you know he was bound for greatness.” 

When the fourth quarter started, the Jazz were losing by double-digits, 93-83. My kid was getting restless, already having a Farrs Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream bowl and a rare indulgence with a soda (Sprite). We climbed the 20+ rows to the top, top of the stadium where some empty space allowed kids to run around or parents to stand, stretch, and watch closeby. 

Instead of watching a few minutes of losing basketball, my kid decided to ride up and down, and then up and down, and then up and down some more of a nearby escalator. A few other kids were doing the same, so mine hopped in and added extra layers of difficulty to the ride. At one point, he tackled the difficult task of walking up an escalator going down, reaching the very tip before slipping and falling on the metal sheet that bridges mechanical and carpet. Starting to move back down, his panic kicked in as he scrambled on all fours to get up over the hump. Tears, a scrape on the elbow, and embarrassment were the final result. 

Writing this now and reflecting on the incident – the rise, the fall, the crash, the tears – a parallel to fandom exists. 

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My dad took me to a lot of Jazz games as a kid.

We’d leave right after school from North Ogden and get off on Beck Street between 4:30 and 5:00 pm. We would check out the store, accessible from the outside of the arena and in the basement, before walking around the arena to watch the players and coaches roll into the under-arena parking and wave from tinted windows. We’d scurry inside to watch players warm-up, whether it was Jazzmen or the other team. I used to keep a binder of posters and magazine cutouts to hunt for autographs, alongside all the hundreds of basketball cards I had carefully collected. From those games with my dad, I created quite a treasure chest of objects, and memories. 

After an awestruck hour or so, we’d make our way back outside and go eat at Crown Burger, taking advantage of the deal to order $20 and get a free parking pass. While the Pastrami Burger is their big-hitter, we’d always get the chicken tender platter with salad, fries, pita bread, really good ranch, and an orange soda to top it off. 

We rarely sat in the lower bowl, but we didn’t care. We saw LeBron and Carlos Boozer on the Cavs, Kobe and the Lakers many times, the dynastic Spurs, our old hometown team in the Blazers, and cheered on wins or lamented losses. I never saw MJ with the Bulls live in the Delta Center, but we did get tickets to watch him with the Wizards in 2002. Looking at the box score now, MJ came off the bench for 11 points, which tied the amount of his pushed-off counterpart Bryon Russell. After any game, we’d drive home in the black of night to the tune of the post-game interviews and analysis. 

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After a John Collins three and then dunk, the Jazz were down only three with four minutes left in the game. Pumped and reset, I told my dude it was time to go back to our seats. They were making a comeback! It’s going to be a fun finish, I promised. Let’s go watch! 

And the next two minutes were especially fun! A Colin Sexton three got us out of our seats, a Brice Sensebaugh (ROOKIE!) clutch pull-up jumper resulted in high fives, and then we thoroughly freaked out when Kai’s JC00 drove the lane and shocked the world with a massive dunk in transition that caused the crowd to cry in chaos. The throwdown tied the game at 111 and neither team could enjoy the comfort of more than a three-point lead for the rest of the game. 

Have you ever been to a game where the Jazz lost, my kid asked? Oh yes, I said, many times. Have you ever been to a game where they won, he also added? Yes, I said, many times. 

It was electric now with fans “engaged,” “different,” “special,” and “showing up in a major way” like Larsen had written days earlier for the SLTrib. The Bulls were without Zach LaVine, a high-flying, fun star, and were stuck in no man’s land as a franchise since Derrick Rose was team captain in 2014. On the opposite end, the Jazz were without four starters – Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, Lauri Markkanen, and Walker Kessler. Tickets were as low as $11 leading up to the game. There was nothing on the line and nothing to play for, just a notch in a column for Godfrey’s win or loss count. 

Once tied at 111, the final two minutes could only be described as raucous with the Jazz being so close countless possessions in a row. I had to persuade my kid to stand in the space next to us instead of sitting and jumping and standing on his easily-foldable chair that was soon to break his arm. When Sexton hit a three, giving the Jazz their first lead in forever, he took my advice and went crazy safely. DeMar DeRozan went on a personal 5-0 run to our utter devastation, but I kept telling my kid that there was still a chance. Mathematically, I tried to explain the game plan with ten seconds left. 

And then a fight broke out. After Sexton hit two free throws to bring the score 117-116, he also intentionally fouled to stop the clock after the inbounds. Standing in front of the Bulls bench, something was said, a shove was pushed, and then the benches cleared as a Bulls assistant coach grabbed John Collins escalating the kerfuffle higher. Anxiously, the minutes ticked by as refs reviewed the incident to determine technicals and foul shots. At first, we were proud, then we were angry, then we were nervous as if this was the final blow to end the Jazz’s chance for a win. Tick, tick, tick, the refs still weren’t making a decision and the jumbotron wouldn’t show the replay. It was announced, two technical fouls on the Bulls and one on the Jazz. Clarkson hit the shot for us, DeRozan hit both his free throws from the Sexton person foul that started the whole shebang, and it was now 119-117 with nine seconds on the clock. 

They did have a chance, I proudly told my kid. Any shot sends it to overtime and a three gives them the win! After timeouts, the Jazz drew up a play for a Clarkson three. It was a perfect set-up. A perfect opportunity. He was wide open. 

He missed. 

But the rebound went to the Bulls as they stepped out of bounds, so we still had another chance! Only five seconds left the clock, so they still had time to get off a good look. This time the play was for Sexton, who shook one of the best perimeter defenders to the floor and ran to the corner for a wider than wide open three. He stood in isolation, complete loneliness, by himself on a stranded island as time stood still for us in the upper bowl. 

He put up the shot. 

It hung in the air. 

It floated. 

Danced. 

Drifted toward the hoop. 

Miss. 

Buzzer. 

Game over. 

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A lot of times, a writer will exaggerate the truth just a little bit to improve the story ever so slightly. It’s still mostly what happened, so a white lie can be forgiven. Or, the author will use words like literally and I kid you not to stress the importance of the truth, this is exactly as described, the details are true, and I can not emphasize enough how perfectly accurate this is. 

For me, what happens next is one of those scenes with a quote that ties the story together in perfect harmony, stabbing dad right in the heart on the tortured nature of fandom and fanhood, especially as my kid begins his journey into the not-so-secrety society of those who allows sports to cut a little too deeply. 

Crying, in heaves of sobs, my little guy looked at me with buckets of tears falling off his face. In complete disbelief that Sexton missed the shot, that the Jazz had run out of time, and that the game ended with an L for the hometeam, he struggled to find the words to express the big emotions in his small body. 

“I guess we still can’t beat the Bulls,” he squeeked. 

Right on que, and completely on accident, the arena shot of streamers. Cut scene.