Utah Jazz

Utah Jazz 

A team coming from the arid soils of the desert, Utah has a rich history with quite a few legends of the game playing for them throughout time. They started their journey in the NBA in 1974 located in New Orleans in the beginnings, and them move on to the Salt Lake City because of money problems. Two of their main Hall of Famers and league legends have come to play for them through draft. In 1984, the Jazz picked John Stockton with their 16^th overall pick and in the following year they got Karl Malone with the 13^th overall pick. Things were about to get exciting for the Utah State based team, as those two of them were about to form one of the best duo in league’s history, known for their master pick-and-roll plays. With the addition of coach Jerry Sloan in the late ‘80s, Utah Jazz began to show sights of improvement, and for a decade, they were about to be a force coming out from the West. They played the Conference Finals for a few times in the early ‘90s, but lost every time, once with the Houston Rockets and once with Seattle SuperSonics, but the best was still yet to come. In 1997, they finally managed to get to the NBA Finals, but unfortunately for them (and all of the teams in that period that went to the Finals) they had to go through Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, who were entitled as the best team in NBA history at that time. They lost in six games, but a rematch would eventually happen right in the next season, and this time they were a little bit unlucky, as they were only seconds away of forcing a Game 7 at home, but then Michael Jordan took over and made the game winner which represented his 6^th championship. After those two high peaking years, they cooled off a little, and even if they made the playoffs in the following years, they didn’t manage to do a lot, and in 2003 John Stockton chose to retire, while Karl Malone went on and play one last season of his career for the Los Angeles Lakers. Stockton remained one of the best point guards to every play in the league, as he is currently leading the ladder in assists and steals while the Mailman was a walking double-double with 25+ points and two regular season MVPs. When those two left, the Jazz went through a rebuilding process, and in 2005 they got Deron Williams from the draft and they started to make the playoff again, but the legendary coach Jerry Sloan went on an retired because of some problems that he had with the running point guard. The franchise finally got something in 2017 when they won a Division title after many years, with Gordon Hayward and Rudy Gobert being the centerpieces of the team, but they got swept by the Warriors in the second round, and Hayward left them in that summer. Donovan Mitchell is currently the hope for them to do some good, and since he came into the league in 2017, they have all the reason to trust him as their future superstar player.