Jazz History

The first season in franchise history. The New Orleans Jazz were admitted to the NBA as an expansion franchise on June 7, 1974, under an ownership group led by Sam Battistone, and team officials picked the name for its dictionary definition — collective improvisation. The colors were purple, gold and green.

did not qualify · Municipal Auditorium / Loyola Field House

• The court at Loyola Field House stood so high above the floor that the players association made the club string a net around it so nobody tumbled into the stands.
• Officials chose the name Jazz not only for the music but for the dictionary definition they liked even better: collective improvisation.
• Before the franchise had played a single game it traded six future draft picks for Pete Maravich, a debt that hung over the next five Jazz drafts.
• Three men coached the team in its first year, one of them for exactly one game, after Scotty Robertson was fired at 1-14.
• Elgin Baylor's single game as interim coach was not the end of his time here, as he came back to coach all 82 of the final New Orleans season in 1978-79.

The second season in franchise history, and by some distance the biggest year-over-year jump the Jazz ever made in New Orleans. Coming off the 23–59 expansion year, the team improved by fifteen wins to finish 38–44 — a respectable mark for a two-year-old franchise, but still not enough to reach the postseason.

did not qualify (second straight season)

• Sixteen games into this same season the ABA's Utah Stars missed payroll and were shut down by their league, emptying the market the Jazz would move into four years later.
• Coming off a 23-59 expansion year, the club jumped to 38-44, a fifteen-win improvement that no other New Orleans season came close to matching.
• Pete Maravich made the All-NBA First Team for a franchise only two years old, the biggest individual honor the young team had yet produced.
• Thirty-eight wins were still not enough for the postseason, the second entry in what became nine straight seasons without a playoff game.

The third season in franchise history, and the one that produced the single most consequential decision the Jazz ever made — a decision taken before the season even began.

did not qualify (third straight season)

• New Orleans held the rights to Moses Malone and let them go to protect a draft pick, then turned around and traded that pick away too.
• One of the picks sent to Los Angeles for Gail Goodrich came due in 1979 as the first selection in the draft, and the Lakers used it on Magic Johnson.
• Two trades had now cost the franchise ten future draft picks, and it had yet to play a single playoff game.
• E. C. Coleman made the All-Defensive First Team for a club that finished twelve games under .500.
• For the second straight season Pete Maravich was named to the All-NBA First Team, the one constant while the franchise traded its future away.

The fourth season in franchise history, and the best record the Jazz ever posted in New Orleans.

did not qualify (fourth straight season)

• Sitting at 16-24 and eight games under .500, the Jazz reeled off ten wins in a row and were back within one game of even inside three weeks.
• Thirty-nine wins was the best the franchise ever managed in Louisiana, and it still left the club at home in April.
• At 36-37 and squarely in the playoff hunt, six straight losses ended the chase, and three wins to close the year came too late to matter.
• Nobody knew it at the time, but this was the last season the New Orleans Jazz ever improved on the previous year, with 26-56 and the move west waiting.
• Oddly, Maravich slipped from All-NBA First Team to Second Team in the very season his team played its best basketball in New Orleans.

The fifth season in franchise history and the last in New Orleans. Elgin Baylor, who had coached exactly one game for the club as an interim in the 1974–75 expansion year, was now the head coach for all 82, and he took a team that had gone 39–43 the previous season down to 26–56 and sixth place in the Central Division .

6th, Central Division · did not qualify (fifth straight season) · Louisiana Superdome

• Every Mardi Gras threatened to push the Jazz onto the road for a full month, the same scheduling squeeze San Antonio still lives with during its rodeo.
• Elgin Baylor bookended the New Orleans era, coaching exactly one interim game in the franchise's first season and every one of the 82 in its last.
• The city levied an 11 percent amusement tax, the highest in the country at the time, one reason the Superdome years never worked financially.
• Five seasons in Louisiana cost the ownership group about $5 million, and they left a bigger market for a smaller one on the evidence that Salt Lake City had turned out for the ABA's Utah Stars.
• Pro basketball did not come back to New Orleans until 2002, when the Charlotte Hornets moved in, became the Pelicans in 2013 and handed the old name back to Charlotte.

The sixth season in franchise history and the first in Utah. The Jazz relocated from New Orleans to Salt Lake City on June 8, 1979, and kept the name — there was not enough time before the season began to get league approval for a change, so a team named for the music of New Orleans went to a state with no jazz scene to speak of.

5th, Midwest Division · did not qualify (sixth straight season) · Salt Palace

• Utah kept the name Jazz for want of time, since the move was approved in June 1979 and there was no window to get a new one past the league before opening night.
• Waived in January, Pete Maravich finished the season in Boston as a teammate of a rookie named Larry Bird.
• Moving to Salt Lake City actually cost the club at the gate, attendance falling from 364,205 in New Orleans to 320,649 in Utah.
• The first win in Salt Lake City came by a single point, 110-109 over the San Diego Clippers at the Salt Palace, ending an 0-4 start.
• Frank Layden watched this season from the front office rather than the bench, still two years away from taking the coaching job that made his name.

The seventh season in franchise history and the second in Salt Lake City. It began with the best stretch of basketball the Utah Jazz had yet played and then fell apart in a hurry.

did not qualify (seventh straight season)

• Darrell Griffith was named Rookie of the Year for a club that lost 54 games, which tells you what kind of season it was around him.
• Six games over .500 at 12-6, the Jazz then lost fifteen of their next seventeen and finished 26 games under at 28-54.
• Adrian Dantley's All-NBA Second Team selection gave the Jazz two decorated players on a roster that won 28 games.
• Four more wins than the year before bought nothing at all, the playoff drought stretching to seven straight seasons.
• Three of the franchise's four worst win totals to date came in the seasons around the move, 26 and then 24 and then 28, with only the 23-win expansion year beneath them.

The eighth season in franchise history and the worst the Jazz would post for more than two decades.

did not qualify (eighth straight season)

• Frank Layden did not so much get hired as move down a floor, going from general manager to head coach twenty games into the season.
• Twenty-five wins stood as the worst mark in franchise history for 23 years, and when 2004-05 finally came close at 26-56 it was still one win better.
• The green road jersey unveiled this year lasted only three seasons, retired in 1984 just as the club reached its first playoffs.
• Utah came in hoping to build on 28 wins and finished three short, the same margin by which it had missed its own previous total back in 1976-77.

The ninth season in franchise history, and the last unhappy one for a very long time.

did not qualify (ninth straight season, and the last time the Jazz missed until 2004)

• Dominique Wilkins is on the books as a Utah Jazz draft pick who never played a minute for the team, having refused to report after going third overall.
• In six seasons the club let go of Moses Malone's rights, traded the pick that became Magic Johnson and drafted Dominique Wilkins only to send him to Atlanta.
• Money was so short by 1983 that the Jazz scheduled home games at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas as a revenue stunt while relocation rumors started up again.
• Nine years in, the franchise had still never finished a season above .500, and then it went 45-37 and won the division the very next year.
• This was the last time the Jazz missed the playoffs until 2004, the end of a nine-year drought and the start of twenty consecutive postseason trips.

This was the Jazz's tenth season in the NBA and their fourth in Utah, and it produced the first playoff appearance in the history of the franchise. It did not start that way: the season opened on October 28, 1983, with a 139–125 loss at Denver, and the Jazz lost again the next night .

1st, Midwest Division — the first division title and first winning season in franchise history · beat Denver 3–2 in the Western Conference First Round, lost to Phoenix 2–4 in the Conference Semifinals · Salt Palace, plus 11 home games at the Thomas & Mack Center in the Las Vegas Valley

• The NBA's all-time scoring record changed hands in a Jazz home game played in Las Vegas, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hooking over Mark Eaton from twelve feet to pass Wilt Chamberlain at 31,421 points.
• Frank Layden swept three league honors in one spring, Coach of the Year, Executive of the Year and the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award.
• Ten seasons in, the Jazz finally won something, taking the Midwest Division for the first title of any kind in franchise history.
• Denver fell 3-2 in the first playoff series the franchise ever won, and Utah would not miss the postseason again until 2004.
• Because of the Las Vegas experiment, Jazz games were carried on television in the Las Vegas market that season.

The 1984–85 season was the first in the NBA for John Stockton, whom the Jazz took with the 16th overall pick of the 1984 draft . It was not a popular choice at the time — the Jazz fans on hand for the draft party booed the selection of the unknown guard.

returned to the playoffs for a second straight year · beat Houston 3–2 in the first round, lost to Denver 1–4 in the Conference Semifinals · Salt Palace

• Jazz fans gathered at the team's draft party booed out loud when the club spent its first-round pick on John Stockton.
• Mark Eaton blocked 5.6 shots a game this season, a single-season record that has stood ever since.
• The franchise was up for sale and close to leaving town in the same year it drafted the point guard who would define it, until Larry H. Miller bought half the club in April.
• Houston brought Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson to the first round and lost anyway, Utah taking the series 3-2 before Denver ended the run 4-1.
• Taken sixteenth overall, Stockton would retire as the NBA's all-time leader in both assists and steals, with 15,806 and 3,265.

The 1985–86 season is the one the franchise dates its modern era from: the Jazz used the 1985 draft on Louisiana Tech forward Karl Malone, giving them the second half of what became the most famous pick-and-roll partnership in NBA history.

lost to Dallas 1–3 in the Western Conference First Round · Salt Palace

• Louisiana Tech forward Karl Malone arrived in the 1985 draft and lined up beside a second-year point guard named John Stockton, the start of a partnership that lasted 18 seasons.
• Before a ball was tipped the Jazz lost a starter for the whole year, Darrell Griffith's stress fracture keeping him from playing so much as a single game.
• Utah went into the playoffs without its leading man, Adrian Dantley missing the entire Dallas series as the Mavericks closed it out 3–1.
• Mark Eaton anchored the defense again and made the All-Defensive First Team a year after being voted Defensive Player of the Year.
• Rookie Malone put up 14.9 points and 8.9 rebounds a night, enough for the All-Rookie First Team on a short-handed club that scraped out a 42–40 finish.

The Jazz opened the year hoping to improve on the 42–40 they had managed the season before, and they did, by two games, finishing 44–38 and qualifying for the playoffs for a fourth consecutive season.

the team's 13th season in the NBA and its fourth straight playoff berth · lost to Golden State in the Western Conference First Round · Salt Palace

• Utah came within one signature of becoming a Minneapolis team, until Larry Miller stepped in at the last minute and bought Sam Battistone's remaining half of the club for $14 million.
• The two men who tried to buy and move the Jazz, Marv Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner, founded the Timberwolves instead, a franchise itself nearly sold and shipped to New Orleans in 1994.
• Bidding for the club reached $28 million, about double what the Jazz had been thought to be worth when Miller bought his first half a year earlier.
• Adrian Dantley, the man who had carried the franchise through its early Utah years, was traded to Detroit for Kelly Tripucka in the same off-season the boardroom fight raged.
• Darrell Griffith returned from a season lost to injury and found his starting guard job gone, handed over to Bob Hansen.

The 14th season for the franchise and the ninth in Salt Lake City was the one in which the Jazz became a genuinely difficult team to play. They allowed 104.8 points a game, fifth-fewest in the league, and posted the NBA's best defensive rating .

3rd, Midwest Division — 5th seed in the Western Conference · beat Portland 3–1 in the First Round, lost to the Los Angeles Lakers 3–4 in the Conference Semifinals · Salt Palace

• Kelly Tripucka, a two-time All-Star in Detroit, was paid $971,000 to sit on Utah's bench and joked that he had cropped his hair so nobody would recognize him there.
• Malone guaranteed a win before Game 6 against the Lakers, and Frank Layden told reporters he had scolded him for it, because you walk softly past a sleeping lion.
• Game 6 opened with a 26–2 Utah run that the Los Angeles Times called the worst stretch of Showtime seen in the 1980s, and it ended 108–80.
• Only once in the entire decade had the Lakers been pushed to a seventh game, and the club from Salt Lake City dragged them there in May 1988.
• Jose Ortiz, Utah's first-round pick in 1987, chose Spain over Salt Lake City and did not play a minute for the team that drafted him until the following season.

The 15th season in franchise history began with the Jazz winning eight of their first ten games, including a seven-game November winning streak, and ended with them being swept out of the playoffs by a seventh seed. In between, the club changed coaches for good.

1st, Midwest Division — 2nd seed in the Western Conference · swept 0–3 by the 7th-seeded Golden State Warriors in the First Round · Salt Palace

• Baltimore had left Jerry Sloan unprotected in the 1966 expansion draft, and 22 years later a Baltimore paper's photograph of the empty chair meant for him became the running joke of his hiring in Utah.
• Frank Layden stepped down in December and handed the team to Sloan, a switch that blindsided nearly everyone in Salt Lake City, Sloan very much included.
• Accepting the All-Star MVP trophy in the Houston Astrodome in front of 44,735 people, Karl Malone had his mother and stepfather standing beside him in tears.
• Three Jazz players made the 1989 All-Star Game, a first for the franchise, and the nine minutes Mark Eaton played in it were the only All-Star minutes of his career.
• After Eaton swatted 11 shots in a December game, Philadelphia coach Jimmy Lynam said he could keep the Defensive Player of the Year award for as long as he stayed in the league.

The Jazz's 16th season produced the best regular season the franchise had ever had and another first-round exit. Utah won seven of its first eight games, took 11 of 14 in January including a nine-game winning streak, sat at 33–14 at the All-Star break, ran off another seven-game streak between February and March, and finished 55–27 — a game behind San Antonio in the Midwest.

2nd, Midwest Division, one game behind San Antonio (56–26) — 4th seed in the West · lost to Phoenix 2–3 in the Western Conference First Round · Salt Palace

• John Stockton once planted a fake story that Charlotte's Armon Gilliam had run Malone down in a television interview, and Malone took the bait for 52 points.
• Malone poured in 61 points on 21-of-26 shooting in only 33 minutes as Milwaukee lost 144–96, the worst defeat in Bucks history.
• About an hour after Malone's 61-point night, a steam leak emptied the Salt Palace.
• A.C. Green edged Malone for the All-Star start by 1,216 ballots out of more than 320,000, then became the only player on either roster who failed to score in his lone appearance.
• Utah had lost ten straight in Phoenix going back to March 1986 and stood 4–37 in its previous 41 visits before finally winning a playoff game there in 1990.

The 17th season in franchise history opened on the other side of the world. The Jazz and the Phoenix Suns played the first two games of the 1990–91 season at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, the first regular-season games any American major professional sports league had staged outside North America . Utah was the designated home team for the first game and lost it 119–96, with Tom Chambers scoring 38 and Karl Malone 33 . As the road team the next day the Jazz won 102–101, and came home with a split . Both games drew 10,111.

2nd, Midwest Division — 5th seed in the Western Conference · beat Phoenix 3–1 in the First Round, lost to Portland 1–4 in the Conference Semifinals · Salt Palace — the last season the Jazz played there

• The season opened in Tokyo, the first regular-season games any American major professional league had played outside North America, and Utah took the second one 102–101 when Tom Chambers missed at the buzzer.
• Mark Eaton, who played nine seasons alongside him, marked Darrell Griffith's departure by recalling that Griffith had been there back when the Jazz drew 2,000 fans a night.
• Jazz fans who followed the team to Tokyo spent roughly $1,500 apiece for the privilege, and tickets inside the arena ran as high as $175.
• In the game that ended their season at Portland the Jazz shot 23 for 24 from the free-throw line and lost anyway.
• This was the last year in the Salt Palace, 12,616 seats and not one luxury suite.

The Jazz moved into a new home and had the best season in their history to that point. Larry H. Miller announced in July 1991 that Delta Air Lines had bought the naming rights to the arena he had privately financed . The building was finished on October 4, 1991 and dedicated on the 10th, and it replaced a Salt Palace that seated 12,616 and had no luxury suites or retail space.

1st, Midwest Division — 2nd seed in the Western Conference · beat the Los Angeles Clippers 3–2, beat Seattle 4–1, lost to Portland 2–4 in the franchise's first Western Conference Finals · Delta Center — the team's first season in the building

• Four and a half minutes into a December meeting, Malone's elbow opened a cut over Isiah Thomas's eye that took 40 stitches, and Detroit players called it premeditated payback for Thomas scoring 44 the time before.
• Game 4 against the Clippers was moved to the Anaheim Convention Center because Los Angeles was in the middle of the riots.
• Larry Miller stood in tears in front of thousands of guests as the Delta Center was dedicated, a building put up in record time for an American arena.
• Sloan and Dennis Rodman had to be pulled apart in a bench-clearing dispute that produced six technical fouls, four weeks before Malone's elbow found Isiah Thomas.
• The Delta Center's first tenants went 45–4 in the new building and had not lost at home since the Lakers came through in March.

The 19th season in franchise history and the 14th in Salt Lake City was also the season Salt Lake City took its turn on the league's biggest stage: the NBA All-Star weekend came to the Delta Center. On the floor, the Jazz began the year with a retooled backcourt and bench after an off-season trade brought Jay Humphries and Larry Krystkowiak in from Milwaukee, and the new pieces took hold immediately — Utah won six of its first eight games.

3rd, Midwest Division (6th seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference First Round to Seattle SuperSonics, 2–3 · Delta Center

• Karl Malone and John Stockton shared the All-Star Game MVP award in their own building, the Delta Center, after the West won it 135–132 in overtime.
• Michael Jordan irritated a good many Utahns by saying the All-Star Game belonged somewhere warm where he could golf, then turned up in Salt Lake City after a full day of golf in Las Vegas.
• Because Magic Johnson wears No. 32 at All-Star weekend, Malone picks another number with a private meaning every year: 7 for Pete Maravich, 26 for Frank Layden's college number, 4 for Jerry Sloan.
• James Donaldson had not played all season and was working out alone in Seattle when the Jazz called in April, and he was on a plane to Salt Lake City the same afternoon.
• For the first time in the 42-year history of the All-Star Game, neither the Celtics nor the Lakers had a single man on either roster.

The 20th season in franchise history brought two familiar faces home and one enormous trade. In August the Jazz signed free-agent forward Tom Chambers, a four-time All-Star and former University of Utah star who had wanted to sign in Salt Lake City five years earlier before landing in Phoenix . A draft-day deal the month before had brought seven-footer Felton Spencer over from Minnesota for Mike Brown .

3rd, Midwest Division (5th seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference Finals to Houston Rockets, 1–4 · Delta Center

• Only one team had ever forced a Game 7 after falling behind 3–0, the 1951 Knicks, who then lost it, and Denver came within a night of going one better against Utah.
• Mike Brown left for Minnesota but kept his Sugar House restaurant, Brown Bear's Burgers and Dogs, running with his family in Salt Lake, shrugging that the Brown Bear had simply joined the Pack.
• Karl Malone's entire explanation for finishing far down the MVP ballot was five words: "I'm just in Utah, that's all."
• David Benoit's last-second steal and score put San Antonio out of the playoffs at the Delta Center, 95–90.
• Mark Eaton finished with four shot-blocking titles and two Defensive Player of the Year awards, yet he never averaged double figures in scoring and made exactly one All-Star team.

This was the best regular season the franchise had ever played, and it ended in nine days of disbelief.

2nd, Midwest Division (3rd seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference First Round to Houston Rockets, 2–3 · Delta Center

• Cut loose by Utah, Tom Chambers signed with Maccabi Tel Aviv so quickly that he had to drive to San Francisco and stand in line for a passport, never having set foot in Israel.
• John Stockton passed Magic Johnson as the NBA's all-time assist leader during a 129–88 demolition of Denver, the fourteenth win in a row.
• Blue Edwards and Jay Humphries were traded for one another twice, in June 1992 and again in February 1995, the second time as the headline pieces of the deal.
• Antoine Carr had been calling himself the Big Dawg years before the Purdue player who later claimed the nickname, so the Deseret News headlined his signing "Original Big Dawg Joins the Jazz."
• Five of the twelve men on the 60-win roster were free agents or exposed to the expansion draft when the season ended, and Malone said he would remember the twelve men in the room, not the records.

The 22nd season in franchise history came within one game of the NBA Finals.

2nd, Midwest Division (3rd seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference Finals to Seattle SuperSonics, 3–4 · Delta Center

• On the possession before he broke the career steals record, Stockton was fouled in the backcourt and heaved the ball from 60 feet anyway, and it swished, did not count, and brought the crowd up roaring.
• Portland managed 64 points in Game 5, the lowest total in NBA playoff history, only 24 of them in the first half, and Malone called it the best game Utah had played all season.
• Since 1988 the Jazz had hired and released six different men purely to back up John Stockton, a job the Deseret News described as waiting on a legend.
• David Robinson, normally the league's model of sportsmanship, publicly accused referee Steve Javie of holding a personal grudge after fouling out of the elimination game in Salt Lake City.
• NBA.com went live during this season, promising fans a 24-hour link to scores, statistics and All-Star voting from anywhere in the world.

The Jazz opened the season with a new identity — a new primary logo built around purple mountains and light blue script, and new home and road uniforms with a mountain graphic behind the word "Jazz" . The look would stay in place until 2004.

1st, Midwest Division (1st seed, Western Conference) · lost NBA Finals to Chicago Bulls, 2–4 · Delta Center (38–3 at home)

• Karl Malone was booed all afternoon in Cleveland at the 1997 All-Star Game, even during his introduction as one of the 50 greatest players ever, after saying he would rather have been home in Salt Lake City.
• Denver shot 73 percent from the field in the first half at the Delta Center and still lost, leaving Nuggets coach Dick Motta to say his team looked like a deer in a headlight.
• Shaquille O'Neal sank a baseline jumper at the buzzer to beat the Jazz 100-98 in April, the first buzzer-beating game-winner of his life at any level.
• Five of the biggest names at that All-Star Game sat out injured, prompting Malone to recall that the one time he was genuinely hurt, the league threatened to fine him if he did not play.
• Bryon Russell led the Jazz in three-pointers and played his way into the starting lineup, and then received not a single vote for Most Improved Player.

The defending Western Conference champions lost their point guard before the season even started. On October 13, John Stockton — who had missed four games in 13 years and had played 609 consecutive regular-season games, the third-longest active streak in the league — had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee to remove loose cartilage, followed by a micro-fracture procedure . The team doctor warned he might have permanent limitations . Stockton missed the first 18 games.

1st, Midwest Division (1st seed, Western Conference) · lost NBA Finals to Chicago Bulls, 2–4 · Delta Center

• Greg Foster had played for six teams in seven years before Utah, was traded to Orlando, and was back in a Jazz uniform two days later when Rony Seikaly refused to report.
• In the lowest-scoring game in Finals history, Karl Malone scored every Utah point for most of a six-minute stretch while his teammates went 1 for 19 before Shandon Anderson finally hit a 13-footer.
• Bryon Russell asked to be taken out of the starting lineup six games into the season, then could not get the job back because Adam Keefe played too well.
• John Stockton had by then appeared in all 127 playoff games in Jazz history, every one the franchise had ever played.
• Jerry Sloan lost the official Coach of the Year vote to Larry Bird but won the Sporting News award chosen by his fellow NBA coaches, the first national honor for a Jazz coach.

The lockout pushed the start of the season to February 5, 1999 and cut the schedule from 82 games to 50. It also gutted the team standing in Utah's way: Michael Jordan retired for a second time, Scottie Pippen was traded to Houston, Dennis Rodman signed with the Lakers and Phil Jackson's contract expired . The Jazz, twice runners-up, had every reason to think the third try would be theirs.

2nd, Midwest Division on a tie-breaker with San Antonio (3rd seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference Semifinals to Portland Trail Blazers, 2–4 · Delta Center

• Pregame fireworks left a thin layer of ash over the Delta Center and the Bear rode a motorcycle to center court, and Thurl Bailey was the only Jazz player who enjoyed it while his teammates covered their ears.
• Karl Malone spent two years saying he wanted a second Most Valuable Player award so that the first Podoloff Trophy's buddy would not be lonely on the mantle at home.
• The Bulls, who had beaten Utah in the previous two Finals, went 13-37 in the lockout year, the worst record in their history, and landed in the draft lottery.
• Utah and Sacramento needed overtime in five of their eight meetings that season, including twice in a five-game playoff series.
• Malone's second MVP came at an awkward moment, with his Jazz already eliminated, and he balked at going to New York for the televised ceremony.

The Jazz were the oldest team in the NBA and everyone knew it, including them. Their revamped opening-night starting lineup averaged nearly 35 years of age . The New York Times called them "America's last old-school team" and described a locker room of ice buckets, electronic stimulators, reflexology and a travelling wellness man — "Like a M.A.S.H. unit," said 35-year-old Armen Gilliam . Portland coach Mike Dunleavy put it another way: "I keep waiting for them to get old and go away, but they just won't go away" .

1st, Midwest Division (2nd seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference Semifinals to Portland Trail Blazers, 1–4 · Delta Center

• Kevin Garnett outplayed Karl Malone on the night Malone became the third player in NBA history to reach 30,000 points, then told reporters to save their videos and their stat sheets because this was history.
• Jeff Hornacek left one door open on retirement, saying he might come back if someone got hurt late in a season, to which Jazz executive Kevin O'Connor replied, "We'll beg him."
• A single All-Star night in Oakland paid Hornacek $25,000 for winning 2Ball with Natalie Williams of the Starzz and another $25,000 for the Three-Point Shootout, and he still turned down the dunk contest.
• On the very day he passed 30,000 points, the reigning MVP learned the fans had left him off the All-Star starting five in favor of Garnett, Duncan, Kidd, Bryant and O'Neal.
• Armen Gilliam was out of work at Christmas, and once Utah signed him as their only in-season addition all year, he became the talk of Salt Lake radio.

With Jeff Hornacek retired, the Jazz rebuilt the edges of the roster. John Starks was signed specifically to fill Hornacek's role — "They were very sincere that they wanted me and I'm their guy to fill the role that Jeff Hornacek played over the years," he said . Danny Manning came aboard on a bargain deal, prompting one Deseret News columnist to note the eerie parallels with Tom Chambers in 1993: both 6-foot-10, both around 230 pounds, both 34, both with 12 years and four teams behind them, both former All-Stars signed cheap by a Jazz team whose window was closing . Donyell Marshall arrived from Golden State in the four-team August trade that sent Howard Eisley to Dallas and Adam Keefe to the Warriors .

2nd, Midwest Division (4th seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference First Round to Dallas Mavericks, 2–3 · Delta Center

• Before the Jazz would take him back, David Benoit wrote letters of apology to Larry H. Miller, to Jerry Sloan's staff and to both Frank and Scott Layden, then made the roster on a no-guarantee invitation.
• Danny Manning left for Dallas, the very team that had just knocked Utah out, and Mark Cuban emailed that it would be more fun watching him make shots for the Mavericks than absorbing his playoff daggers.
• Utah's signing of Manning echoed the Tom Chambers signing of 1993 almost eerily, down to the same height, same weight, same age of 34, same twelve years of experience, same four previous teams and same All-Star pedigree.
• Dallas became only the sixth team in NBA history to win a five-game series after falling behind 0-2, the first since Denver in 1994, and Utah was the team on the wrong end.
• John Amaechi chose Utah over the Lakers, Bulls and Magic, having reportedly turned down five years and $17 million from the champions in Los Angeles a year earlier.

The 28th season in franchise history and the 23rd in Salt Lake City opened with the Jazz visibly aging. They lost five of their first seven games and sank to 6–11, and the whispers about the end of the Stockton–Malone era started early. The team steadied itself, reached the All-Star break at 25–24 and finished 44–38, fourth in the Midwest Division and eighth in the West — a 19th straight playoff berth and, more remarkably, a 17th consecutive winning season, which passed the Los Angeles Lakers' run of sixteen between 1976–77 and 1991–92.

4th, Midwest Division (8th seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference First Round to Sacramento, 1–3 · Delta Center

• Bryon Russell, forever the defender on Michael Jordan's 1998 title-winning shot, fractured his pelvis guarding Jordan in their first meeting since, and Washington later signed him to replace Jordan at small forward.
• Malone skipped All-Star media day in Philadelphia with a fully excused absence: he was back home in Salt Lake City, carrying the Olympic torch.
• To keep the Jazz under a luxury tax, Stockton quietly handed back about three million dollars of his own salary, and the league never imposed the tax that summer anyway.
• The night Stockton delivered his 15,000th assist, a kickout that put Utah ahead with 34 seconds left in Houston, the Jazz lost on a three at the buzzer and the postgame talk was all about a technical foul.
• Asked whether he might ever reach 40,000 points, Malone did the arithmetic on the spot and decided it added up to more years than he cared to play.

Nobody outside the building expected this one to work. The Deseret News season preview ran under the question of whether the streak of nineteen straight playoff appearances would finally end, and reported that the whispers were everywhere — press row, radio, the preview magazines. Jerry Sloan's answer fell "somewhere roughly between trust and blind faith" .

3rd, Midwest Division (7th seed, Western Conference) · lost Western Conference First Round to Sacramento, 1–4 · Delta Center

• With five minutes left in Sacramento, Sloan pulled Stockton and Malone at the same moment, and the ovation that followed came from the crowd of the team that had just eliminated them.
• Malone's goodbye at the Delta Center was billed as a birthday party for his wife Kay, drew four to five thousand people, and followed a morning proclamation of Karl Malone Day at the State Capitol.
• Signing with the Lakers, Malone pulled on No. 32, a number Los Angeles had retired eleven years earlier for Magic Johnson.
• Sam Battistone, the owner who moved the Jazz out of New Orleans in 1979, flew in from Las Vegas for no reason other than to attend Malone's farewell party.
• UPI opened its report on the Mark Jackson signing by observing that the oldest team in the NBA had just gotten older.

The 30th season in franchise history was the first without John Stockton and Karl Malone, and expectations collapsed accordingly. Several preview magazines, Sports Illustrated among them, picked the Jazz to finish near the bottom of the NBA, and some predictions went further and had Utah chasing the all-time record for fewest wins in a season.

last, Midwest Division · did not qualify

• Some preseason forecasts had Utah not merely bad but historically bad, in the hunt for the fewest wins in an NBA season, and the team finished two games above .500.
• A 42–40 record looks like nothing at all until you count it as the nineteenth straight winning season, a league record that stood until San Antonio's twentieth in 2016–17.
• Tied with Denver for the final playoff spot with three games to play, Utah lost the last two, costing Sloan a streak of seventeen straight postseason trips by a single game.
• To mark twenty-five seasons in Utah, the club spent the whole year in replicas of the white uniforms it had worn from 1986 through 1996.
• Matt Harpring, the team's second leading scorer, sat out 51 of the 82 games with a knee injury, and the Jazz stayed in the race anyway.

The Jazz's 31st NBA season and 26th in Salt Lake City began well and then came apart. Utah won six of its first seven games, which briefly suggested the post-Malone rebuild was ahead of schedule, then lost 12 of 15 in December. A nine-game losing streak in March finished the job. The team ended 26–56, last in the Northwest Division and out of the playoffs for a second straight year.

last, Northwest Division · did not qualify

• A navy, powder blue and silver scheme took over this season and lasted through 2010, leaving purple alive only on the primary and alternate logos and gone from the jerseys entirely.
• The road shirt now read Utah in powder blue across the chest instead of Jazz, and the mountain-range silhouette of the 1996 set vanished along with the old wordmark.
• Six wins in the first seven games promised something, then December brought twelve losses in fifteen and a nine-game slide in March finished off whatever hope was left.
• Carlos Boozer's first season in Utah lasted 51 games, the start of a long wait before he and Mehmet Okur were finally healthy at the same time.
• This was the franchise's first year in the Northwest Division, arriving straight from a last-place finish in the old Midwest.

The team's 32nd NBA season began with the modest goal of improving on the previous year's 26–56. They improved by fifteen games and finished exactly 41–41 — and still missed the playoffs for a third straight season, having previously not missed once between 1984 and 2004.

did not qualify

• On March 23, 2006 the Jazz raised Malone's No. 32, and Stockton, Hornacek, Eaton and Sloan all came back to stand on the floor with him.
• The ceremony put two Laydens on the same hardwood, Frank, the coach and general manager who built the team around Malone, and his son Scott.
• Among the old teammates invited back was Antoine Carr, standing alongside the more predictable names of Stockton, Hornacek and Eaton.
• Finishing 41–41 is as precisely average as an 82-game schedule allows, and it was still a fifteen-game improvement on the year before.
• In one season the league named Deron Williams a first-team rookie and Andrei Kirilenko a first-team defender, and their team still went .500 and watched the playoffs from home.

The team's 33rd NBA season started with the aim of improving on 41–41. They improved by ten games to 51–31 and returned to the playoffs after three years away. Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur were both named All-Stars. Paul Millsap, a second-round rookie, made the All-Rookie Second Team. The offseason work paid off immediately: the 2006 draft brought Millsap and Ronnie Brewer, and a trade brought veteran guard Derek Fisher.

reached the Western Conference Finals, lost to San Antonio, 1–4 · Delta Center, renamed EnergySolutions Arena in November 2006

• Delta, deep in bankruptcy, let its naming rights lapse in 2006, and the home floor became EnergySolutions Arena, christened for a Salt Lake City radioactive waste disposal company.
• Nobody had time to do the rename properly: two stickers covered the old wordmark on the court for the November 20 game, and painted logos did not turn up until December.
• Jerry Sloan collected career win number 1,000 on December 11 with a 101–79 handling of Dallas, becoming only the fifth coach in NBA history to get there.
• Boozer and Okur were both named All-Stars in February, and when Boozer turned up injured it was Okur who stood in for him in the game itself.
• Utah needed only five games to remove the Golden State team that had just knocked the top-seeded Mavericks out in one of the great playoff upsets.

Utah's 34th NBA season and 28th in Salt Lake City produced 54 wins and the most efficient offense in the league. It was also a season of wild splits between home and road.

beat Houston in the first round, lost the Western Conference Semi-finals to the Los Angeles Lakers, 2–4 · EnergySolutions Arena

• Fresh off being named MVP of the European championship, Andrei Kirilenko posted on a blog that he wanted out of Utah and would walk away from his contract money, then played the whole season anyway.
• Derek Fisher, released from his Utah contract on compassionate grounds, went straight back to the Lakers, the very team that then knocked the Jazz out in the second round.
• Sports Illustrated polled 240 NBA players on the league's most intimidating building, and one in five of them named the Jazz's home floor.
• Best offensive rating in the entire NBA, and still 24 road losses — at home Utah went 37–4 and did not drop a single game in January or February.
• The Korver trade cost Utah a rotation wing and a first-round pick with no year attached to it, a pick that could land anywhere from 2009 to 2014.

The 35th season of the franchise and the 30th since the move from New Orleans was dominated by two things: injuries and a death.

8th seed, Western Conference · lost the First Round to the Los Angeles Lakers, 1–4 · EnergySolutions Arena

• On a Friday night in November, Jerry Sloan beat Oklahoma City 104–97 for his 1,000th win with the Jazz, the first coach in NBA history to reach that number with a single franchise.
• Larry H. Miller had kept the team in Utah back in 1986 by stepping in at the last minute with $14 million for Sam Battistone's remaining half, beating out $28 million offers from buyers bound for Minneapolis.
• A day after Miller died, the Jazz beat the New Orleans Hornets 102–88 and gave the win to the man who had refused to let the franchise leave town.
• Elected to the Hall of Fame in the same class as his old point guard John Stockton, Sloan asked Charles Barkley to introduce him at the ceremony.
• The original J-note logo came back this season, but only on television broadcasts, and only repainted in the navy and powder blue the team happened to be wearing.

The 36th season of the franchise was the last good one of the Sloan–Williams era, and nobody knew it at the time.

beat Denver in the First Round 4–2, swept by the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Semi-finals · EnergySolutions Arena

• Kyle Korver made 53.6 percent of his three-pointers, an NBA record, and then left for Chicago in the offseason.
• Rod Hundley called his last Jazz game in 2009 after 35 years behind the microphone, having been the voice of the club since its very first season in New Orleans in 1974.
• Nobody knew it at the time, but Game 4 of the Lakers sweep was the last playoff game Jerry Sloan would ever coach.
• Deron Williams publicly criticised the trade of Ronnie Brewer, and the man who took the vacancy was Wesley Matthews, undrafted, who finished the year in the starting lineup.
• To mark 30 years since the move from New Orleans, Utah brought back the green uniforms of 1979 to 1984, remade with white trim and lettering.

For half a year this looked like one of the better Jazz teams of the Deron Williams era. Utah opened 15–5, and after a 121–99 rout of the Cleveland Cavaliers the team peaked in mid-January at 27–13, the fourth-best record in the Western Conference at that moment. Nothing about the first three months suggested what came next.

missed the playoffs, six games behind the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies · did not qualify · EnergySolutions Arena

• On February 7 Jerry Sloan disclosed he had signed an extension for a 24th season, two nights later he lost to the Bulls, and the morning after that he resigned.
• When he walked away, Sloan was the longest-tenured head coach in any of the four major North American professional sports, 26 years with the Jazz and 23 of them on the bench.
• Utah sat 27–13 in mid-January after thumping Cleveland, then lost Sloan in February, traded Deron Williams to New Jersey two weeks after that, and dropped eight straight in March.
• Before the season the Jazz went retro, reviving the green-and-gold J-note and unveiling a uniform set nearly identical to the 1970s originals, with navy blue standing in for purple.
• Gray belonged to the Jazz palette for this rebrand and this era alone, tucked in beside navy, gold and dark green on a recolored mountain logo.

A lockout swallowed the front end of the season and the Jazz came back to work looking like a different franchise. This was the first season since 2000–01 that Andrei Kirilenko was not on the opening day roster, and the first full season since 2004–05 without Deron Williams. Jerry Sloan had retired the previous February.

lost Western Conference First Round to the San Antonio Spurs, 0–4 · EnergySolutions Arena

• For the first time since 1988, the Jazz reached the playoffs with someone other than Jerry Sloan on the bench.
• A labor dispute wiped out the first two months, so Utah's 36–30 record was earned over a 66-game schedule rather than the usual 82.
• Opening night arrived without Andrei Kirilenko on the roster for the first time since the 2000–01 season.
• That green alternate unveiled in December was simply the road jersey with the navy and green traded places, and it stuck around four more seasons before retirement.
• San Antonio swept them out of the first round, and the Jazz would not see the postseason again until 2017.

This was the season the Western Conference bracket did the Jazz in. Utah finished 43–39, a winning record and an improvement on the shortened year before, and still watched the playoffs from home. In the Eastern Conference the same record would have been the seventh seed, ahead of a 41–40 Boston Celtics team and a 38–44 Milwaukee Bucks team that both qualified.

did not qualify · EnergySolutions Arena

• Forty-three wins bought nothing in the West while Milwaukee made the Eastern field at 38–44 and Boston at 41–40, both of them worse than the team that stayed home.
• Devin Harris had come to Utah only because Deron Williams left, and now he was shipped out for Marvin Williams, so one Williams quietly became another.
• The season's most consequential move happened upstairs, where Dennis Lindsey arrived to run basketball operations in the same offseason the previous general manager left for San Antonio.
• C.J. Miles, by then one of the longest-serving Jazz players of his era, walked out the door the same summer the front office turned over.
• Kevin Murphy is the only name the franchise records show for this entire draft class.

The fortieth season in franchise history was the worst one Utah had played in more than three decades. Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson, the frontcourt the team had been built around, both left in free agency over the summer, Millsap to Atlanta and Jefferson to Charlotte, and assistant Jeff Hornacek left to become head coach of the Phoenix Suns. What remained was a young roster with no obvious floor.

last in the division and last in the Western Conference · did not qualify, eliminated March 14, 2014 · EnergySolutions Arena

• The banner raised for Jerry Sloan carries the number 1223, which no player ever wore on his back, because it is a win total rather than a jersey.
• Utah's governor proclaimed October 10 as Jazz Bear Day in honor of the mascot's twentieth season, in a year the team itself finished dead last in the conference.
• Sloan spent the worst Jazz season in thirty-four years back inside the building, working as an adviser and scouting consultant.
• Rudy Gobert was drafted by the Denver Nuggets and belonged to them for a matter of minutes on draft night.
• Twenty-five wins were the fewest the franchise had managed since 1979–80, its very first year in Salt Lake City.

The digest for this season is thin, so this is a short and honest record.

did not qualify, eliminated March 27, 2015 — a third consecutive miss · EnergySolutions Arena

• Forty-one seasons in, the franchise had employed only eight head coaches, and Quin Snyder became the eighth.
• Jarnell Stokes was drafted by the Jazz and traded to Memphis for a future second-rounder before he ever pulled the uniform over his head.
• The fifth pick went to Dante Exum, an 18-year-old point guard out of Australia, in a draft class meant to restart the franchise.
• Rodney Hood did not arrive on a Jazz pick at all, the 23rd selection that brought him to Utah had come over from Golden State.
• Before taking the Jazz job, Snyder had served as an NBA assistant in Atlanta, with the Los Angeles Clippers, in Philadelphia and with the Lakers.

Quin Snyder's second team came within one game of the postseason and lost the race on the last night of the schedule. Utah finished 40–42, ninth in the Western Conference, and was pushed out by a Houston Rockets win plus the tiebreaker between the two clubs. It was the fourth consecutive season without playoff basketball in Salt Lake City.

ninth in the Western Conference · did not qualify, missed by one game · Vivint Arena (EnergySolutions Arena until the naming rights changed hands in October 2015)

• Vivint took over the arena name days into the season, ending a sponsorship deal that fans had greeted back in 2006 with nicknames like the Chernobowl and the Tox Box.
• Utah's season ran out on the same night Kobe Bryant played the final game of his career.
• One win and one tiebreaker stood between this team and the playoffs, and Houston took both of them.
• On May 12, 2016 the mountain logo that had been the primary mark since 1996 was retired for a wordmark with Utah set above the two Z's.
• This was the last stand for the 2010 look, as gray left the color scheme for good and the green alternate was worn for the final time.

The rebuild paid off. Utah won 51 games, took the fifth seed in the Western Conference and returned to the playoffs for the first time since 2012, ending a four-year absence. Gordon Hayward and Rudy Gobert both broke out: Hayward was selected to the 2017 NBA All-Star Game, the franchise's first All-Star since Deron Williams in 2011, and Gobert was named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team and the All-NBA Second Team.

fifth seed, Western Conference · beat the Los Angeles Clippers 4–3 in the First Round, swept 0–4 by the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Semifinals · Vivint Arena

• Seven games against the Clippers gave Utah its first playoff series win in seven years, one for every season of waiting.
• Gordon Hayward announced his move to Boston on the Fourth of July, months after making the first Jazz All-Star team since Deron Williams in 2011.
• The team that swept Utah out of the semifinals went on to win the championship.
• Work on a $125 million renovation began the moment the year ended, which made the last home game of 2016–17 the final one played in the old building.
• Rudy Gobert made the All-Defensive First Team and the All-NBA Second Team in the same season Hayward earned his only All-Star selection as a Jazz player.

Gordon Hayward left for Boston on July 4, 2017 and the season was widely written off before it started. It began the way the pessimists expected: an injury to Rudy Gobert and a shortage of scoring left the Jazz 17–21 at the end of December.

fifth seed, Western Conference · beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 4–2 in the First Round, lost to the Houston Rockets 1–4 in the Semifinals · Vivint Arena, reopening after a $125 million renovation completed in fall 2017

• Jae Crowder arrived in a 2018 trade some twenty-six years after his father Corey played 51 games for the Jazz, making him a second-generation Salt Lake City Jazz man.
• The first-round pick Utah surrendered for Ricky Rubio had originally belonged to Oklahoma City, the very team the Jazz then knocked out of the 2018 playoffs.
• Denver drafted Rudy Gobert in 2013 and Donovan Mitchell in 2017, and shipped both of them to Utah on draft night before either wore a Nuggets jersey.
• Sitting 17–21 at the end of December, the Jazz went 32–13 the rest of the way behind a rookie who set the NBA record for three-pointers made by a first-year player.
• Nike's first season outfitting the league brought a gold Statement jersey and the Red Rocks City uniform, a gradient of gold, orange, burgundy and black taken from southern Utah.

The 40th season in Utah began with expectations after the surprise of 2017–18, and for two months it went badly. By the end of November the Jazz were 11–12 and sitting tenth in the Western Conference. December brought no relief as Donovan Mitchell struggled with his shot and the team hovered around .500.

fifth seed, Western Conference · lost the First Round to the Houston Rockets, 1–4 · Vivint Arena

• Three weeks into the season the man who had been climbing into the Jazz Bear suit since 1994 was let go, twenty-four years of work nobody ever saw his face for.
• Sitting tenth in the West at 11-12 at the end of November, Utah then ripped off a 32-13 finish and walked away with fifty wins.
• Two springs in a row now ended against the same team, Houston taking the first round 4-1 after a 33-14 run of its own over the same calendar year.
• Second-best defense in the entire NBA bought the Jazz nothing better than a five-game exit, which is the kind of thing that keeps a coach up in July.
• For the fortieth season in Utah the club brought back a modernized cut of the 1984-96 purple, plus a dark green Earned jersey the league issues only to last year's playoff teams.

The 46th season in franchise history and the 41st in Salt Lake City began as an all-in push and ended as the moment professional sport in North America stopped. In the offseason the Jazz added Mike Conley, Bojan Bogdanović, Jeff Green, Ed Davis and Emmanuel Mudiay while Derrick Favors, Kyle Korver, Jae Crowder, Raul Neto and Ricky Rubio left. Dennis Lindsey was promoted from general manager to executive vice president of basketball operations on May 10, with assistant Justin Zanik elevated to general manager . On the opening day of the season the club announced that Salt Lake City would host the 2023 NBA All-Star Game, the second time the Jazz would host after 1993.

6th seed, Western Conference (3–5 in the eight seeding games in the NBA Bubble) · lost first round to Denver Nuggets, 3–4, after leading the series 3–1 · Vivint Arena (regular season), NBA Bubble (restart and playoffs)

• The arena in Oklahoma City was full and both teams were ready to tip on March 11 when the game was abruptly called off, and by the end of that night the NBA had stopped.
• Utah became the first major North American sports franchise the pandemic reached directly, and the player at the center of it was not even inside the building.
• Donovan Mitchell opened the Denver series with 57 points, third-most in playoff history behind only Michael Jordan and Elgin Baylor, and the Jazz lost the game in overtime anyway.
• Up three games to one on the Nuggets, Utah dropped three straight and went out on a Game 7 buzzer-beater, and within hours Mitchell agreed to a five-year extension.
• Agreed the night before the 2019 draft, the Mike Conley trade then sat in a drawer until July 6 because the salary cap would not let anyone file it.

The 47th season for the franchise and the 42nd in Salt Lake City was the best regular season the Jazz have ever had. They opened with an NBA-best and franchise-record 23–5 run and never let go of the top of the standings. The 52–20 finish worked out to roughly a 59-win pace over a full 82 games, was the club's highest winning percentage since 1998–99 and its first 52-win season since 2009–10. It was also the first time the Jazz had finished atop their conference since 1997–98.

1st in the Western Conference, best record in the NBA · beat Memphis Grizzlies 4–1, lost Western Conference semifinals to Los Angeles Clippers 2–4 · Vivint Arena

• Jordan Clarkson became the first Jazz player ever to win Sixth Man of the Year, and the runner-up he beat for it was his own teammate Joe Ingles.
• On draft night the Jazz traded away the rights to Ante Tomic, a center they had drafted back in 2008 who never played a single minute in the NBA.
• Fifty-two and twenty in a 72-game year is roughly a 59-win pace, and it gave the club the league's best record outright for the first time ever after ties in 1998 and 1999.
• Three Jazz All-Stars in one winter had happened only once before, in 1989 with Stockton, Malone and Eaton, and Quin Snyder coached the West team, a first for a Jazz coach since Frank Layden.
• One game simply vanished from the calendar through no fault of Utah's, because Washington could not put eight healthy players on the floor that night.

The 48th season for the franchise and the 43rd in Salt Lake City was a regression from the league-best 2020–21 campaign, and it turned out to be the end of an era. Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert were both named All-Stars again, but the team did not repeat its regular-season dominance, finishing 49–33 and fifth in the West. An overtime win over Memphis on April 5 clinched a sixth consecutive playoff appearance.

5th seed, Western Conference · lost first round to Dallas Mavericks, 2–4 · Vivint Arena

• Nobody knew it at the time, but this was the last season Mitchell and Gobert played together, and as of 2025 the Jazz have not been back to the playoffs since.
• Trading Joe Ingles in February removed one of the longest-serving faces of the Snyder era, and the coach himself was gone a few months later.
• A second-round pick shipped to Indiana back in 2019 came due in 2021 and turned out to be the very last name called in the entire draft.
• Fitting for a season that never felt settled, the playoff berth came in overtime, an April win over Memphis making it six trips in a row.
• Juancho Hernangomez arrived as salary filler in the Ingles trade and ended up starting nine games and shooting 43.8 percent from three.

The 49th season for the franchise was a demolition and a rebuild in the same twelve months. Quin Snyder resigned on June 5, 2022, after eight seasons. On June 29 the Jazz hired Boston Celtics assistant Will Hardy as his replacement. Then the roster was taken apart: Rudy Gobert went to Minnesota on July 1 and Donovan Mitchell to Cleveland on September 1, the first season since 2017–18 without either of them. The club also unveiled a new logo and a black, white and yellow "remix" colour scheme that fans and media largely disliked, and which stayed in place only until 2024–25.

12th, Western Conference · did not qualify — eliminated April 6, 2023 · Vivint Arena, host of the 2023 NBA All-Star Game

• Salt Lake City hosted the All-Star Game in the very same season the Jazz traded away both of the All-Stars they had the year before.
• Russell Westbrook was, on paper, a Utah Jazz player, and he never appeared in a single game for them before the contract was bought out.
• In front of their own crowd at All-Star weekend, Collin Sexton, Walker Kessler and Jordan Clarkson walked off with the team skills challenge.
• A black, white and yellow remix scheme arrived with the rebuild, was disliked by just about everybody who saw it, and was quietly phased out three years later.
• Named an All-Star reserve in February, Lauri Markkanen was upgraded to a starter eight days after that and finished the year as Most Improved Player.

The 50th season for the franchise in the NBA and the 45th in Utah brought an anniversary, a new way of watching the team, and a second straight losing record. The Jazz failed to improve on 37–45 and finished 31–51.

did not qualify — eliminated March 27, 2024 · Delta Center

• A home game against Golden State was postponed in January after Warriors assistant Dejan Milojevic, the coach who mentored a young Nikola Jokic, collapsed at a team dinner blocks from the arena.
• For the franchise's fiftieth season the club went all the way back to the original 1974-75 New Orleans purple under a banner reading Purple Is Back.
• Coming off cable and onto free over-the-air television lifted Jazz viewership 39 percent in one year, with the signal reaching into five neighboring states.
• Utah won its first two games in the first-ever In-Season Tournament and was mathematically knocked out of the thing inside two weeks.
• Three quarters of a million people, 746,446 to be exact, came through the doors across 41 home dates for a team that went 31-51.

The 51st season for the franchise and the 46th in Salt Lake City was the worst in Jazz history. In June 2024 the club revealed a jersey lineup of two new designs alongside two existing ones under a new "Mountain Basketball" brand philosophy, and the emphasis on the purple mountain look of earlier eras was received well . Almost nothing else went well. By the end of October the Jazz were the last team in the entire NBA still without a win.

last in the Western Conference and worst record in the NBA · did not qualify — eliminated March 10, 2025 · Delta Center

• Kyle Filipowski sat in the green room through the whole of draft night one without hearing his name, and Jayson Tatum wrote publicly that plenty of teams would come to regret it.
• Until this year the Jazz were the only franchise in NBA history that had never lost 60 games in a season, and a late-March loss to Charlotte ended that.
• Worst record in the league, fourteenth-best crowd in the league, with 18,174 people a night still turning up at the Delta Center.
• Deep into October the Jazz were the only club in the entire NBA yet to win a game, which set the tone for everything that followed.
• Filipowski had said he modelled his game on Lauri Markkanen, and then the team that finally called his name at 32 turned out to be Markkanen's.

The 52nd season for the franchise and the 47th in Salt Lake City was the first in which the modern purple mountain identity was fully in place, completing the phase-out of the black and yellow scheme that had been used since 2022–23. The "Icon" and "Association" uniforms both followed the mountain template with black and sky blue trim, and the "City" uniform revived the old "Red Rocks" gradient design recoloured to black and grey with sky blue accents.

worst record in the Western Conference (tied with Sacramento at 22–60, lost the tiebreaker on record against Western Conference opponents) · did not qualify — eliminated March 18 · Delta Center

• Memphis had spent the whole winter telling everyone Jaren Jackson Jr. was staying and not one report had linked Utah to the talks, and then on February 3 the Jazz had him.
• Utah drafted Will Riley at 21 and handed him straight to Washington for Walter Clayton Jr., whom Washington had just taken at 18, then traded Clayton to Memphis seven months later.
• Lauri Markkanen managed only 42 games all year, and Keyonte George quietly turned himself into a 20-point scorer while the rest of the league looked elsewhere.
• Five more wins than the season before still left the Jazz last in the West, tied with Sacramento at 22-60 and losing the tiebreaker on conference games.
• Purple mountains finally stood alone on the front of the uniform this season, closing out the black-and-yellow remix era for good.