25 years later the Jazz are going strong

Twenty-five years ago, the NBA's Jazz came to live in Utah's old Salt Palace.

They enter their 26th season in Utah Wednesday when the Los Angeles Lakers make an 8:30 p.m. visit to Larry H. Miller's Delta Center.

They played their 25th season in Utah in 2003-04.

Other than the team wearing replicas of the 1979-80 jerseys as part of the NBA's league-wide "retro nights" promotion last season and a KJZZ-TV video, little has been made about the silver anniversaries.

There have been a few news stories to mark the 25 years but no emphasis from the team.

"We'll do it on the 50th," said Jazz marketing and sales senior vice president Jay Francis with a laugh.

Kind of like the husband who knows his wedding anniversary is near but figures he still has time and then forgets, the Jazz talked a little before last season about some sort of commemoration but never got to it.

"There wasn't a decision not to do anything. We just had so many irons in the fire," said Francis. "It's not too late to do that."

The whole Larry H. Miller Group turned 25 in the last year, and corporate celebrations were held and a silver anniversary logo was designed for that. The Jazz were part of those internal affairs.

Miller didn't buy into the team until purchasing half for $8 million from Sam Battistone in April 1985 and the other half in 1986 for $14 million. This will be Miller's 20th season of ownership.

"It's really 30 years for us," says Battistone, whose nine-person group started the NBA's 18th franchise in New Orleans in 1974-75. That club played for high rent in the Superdome, poorly designed for basketball, and shared no profitable perks like concessions or parking and was kicked out every year for Mardi Gras. Battistone and Larry Hatfield moved the Jazz to Utah five years later after urging from Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce president Fred Ball, Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson and Deseret News publisher Wendell Ashton, who mounted a season-ticket pre-selling campaign of 5,800 takers to impress the NBA enough to allow the move.

Battistone, now operator of the Field of Dreams stores and living in Las Vegas, still has season tickets and watches Jazz games on satellite.

He's thought about the anniversary lately because people have called him about it, bringing back floods of memories from his relationships with Wilson, Ball, Ashton, financial advisor Spence Eccles, players and original season ticket-holders. "They went through a lot," he says, but he calls the whole thing "an enjoyable process," says he's glad he kept the Jazz name and, "To me, it was successful," even though he had to eventually sell.