Haslam says Jazz in no financial danger

Rumors of the Jazz's fiscal shortcomings are greatly exaggerated, and worries about the basketball franchise's financial health and even its future in Utah are ridiculously unfounded.

So suggests the president of the NBA team, one whose owner fanned the flames of concern with recent claims of losses totaling more than $10 million for the 2005-06 season and nearly $25 million over the past two years.

With negative numbers like that, followers of the club perhaps can't help but wonder if bankruptcy and/or relocation looms.

But such alarmists need not fear, Denny Haslam adamantly insists.

His reasoning:

"That's just not in the cards," said Haslam, president of the Jazz and chief operating officer of owner Larry H. Miller's expansive Sports and Entertainment group.

Haslam concedes that Miller's math has some basis in fact. What the assertion largely lacks, however, is context.

With the team player payroll in the 2005-06 season totaling more than $57 million, and basketball-related income measured in only the strictest sense, losses indeed hit the eight-figure mark over the past year.

Such was similarly the case in 2004-05, when payroll took a quantum jump from the previous season.

But there is a caveat.

The ramped-up spending was fully planned, and a financial windfall realized earlier had been set aside to absorb the entire anticipated fiscal hit.

The Jazz, in other words, had money in the bank from one season earmarked for spending over the ensuing two seasons.

"It's true that we had losses last year," Haslam said, "but we were programmed to lose money last year — and we were programmed to lose money this year."

Here's how, and why:

During the 2003-04 season — when now-retired stars John Stockton and Karl Malone were both away from Utah for the first time in nearly two decades, and payroll (then about $39 million) was a fraction of what it is now — the Jazz banked about $25 million in what amounts to bonus income.

More than $10 million of that came from their share of a $300 million expansion fee that the Charlotte Hornets paid to join the league. The remainder came from a combination of escrow refunds and payments from teams whose payrolls exceeded the league's luxury-tax threshold, both components of a collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and its players association.

"We had a remarkably good year that year," Haslam said.

With that as a backdrop, Miller and the Jazz made a conscious decision to boost payroll for 2004-05, 2005-06 and seasons beyond.