“I think they had a lot to do with it,” said Grant Harrison, former vice president of game operations for the Jazz. You could aid the decibel levels in climbing. You could be despondent over a sketchy foul call like head coach Frank Layden. You could go bonkers after a Darrell Griffith dunk. The band, though, filled with local college kids, helped turn the collective tide of what NBA fandom was in Utah. The organization knew it needed a jolt and wanted to figure out a way to provide that jolt by maneuvering away from the monotony of the game-day organ that pretty much every other NBA team deployed on a nightly basis. The first four years of the franchise in Utah were marred by losing seasons after relocating from New Orleans in 1979. The 12,000-plus seats inside The Salt Palace in downtown Salt Lake City weren’t filled to the brim in the early 1980s. What was known simply as The Utah Jazz Band, the ensemble not only immediately changed the game-day experience for a franchise that was historically bad up until 1983 but also paved the way for Jazz fans to collectively go berserk rather than sit on their hands. And the nightly experience was nothing short of rhapsodic. Because for nearly a decade, from 1983 to 1991 - contrary to popular belief - there was jazz in Utah. Roughly 30 years later, it’s still one of the go-to flashbacks for those who were there living it. He set the ball down on the old Salt Palace hardwood and comfortably went nose-to-nose with the 20-something-year-old now nervously holding that elongated piece of brass, staring one of the superstars of the NBA square in the face.
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