The Utah Jazz season is about to begin. As the season approaches, more news and information is starting to leak. Here’s all the latest news and information.
Ryan Smith is in on the MLB game
Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith recently appeared on the Front Office Sports podcast and talked about his path to owning the Utah Jazz. You can watch the full interview here.
Probably the most interesting part of the show was Smith talking about the potential to bring a baseball team to Utah. From FOS, here’s the quote from Smith talking about getting
a baseball team:
“Our group will be pretty aggressive in how we pursue sports,” he told FOS’s Dan Roberts. “We do it our own way. We don’t do a lot publicly. I actually think that’s not the way expansion really gets done. Salt Lake’s ready for it, but if you saw how we operated with the NHL, it just happened. We said we wanted the NHL, and a couple of months later, we had a team and we were rolling. The sale of the Angels, it just happened … So we’ll be aggressive if there’s an opportunity there.”
My initial reaction is I’m personally somewhat skeptical about one person owning every pro franchise in Utah (outside of RSL). That said, the Millers deserve far more criticism than they do. RSL is turning into a perpetual dumpster fire, and Jazz fans, to this day, have a fatalist mentality that stems from Miller family ownership. No one benefited more from small-market anonymity than the Miller family, who consistently let Jazz fans down. Ryan Smith has been a clear upgrade. He hasn’t been perfect, but from the outside looking in, he appears to care about winning a title far more than simply making money. For so long with the Millers, especially post-Stockton and Malone, winning was secondary to making sure they turned a profit. This probably deserves an article of its own, but there’s a clear distinction here with Ryan Smith than what the Millers did. The Millers used winning to make money. They wanted to make the playoffs and win games so tickets would sell. A championship was not ACTUALLY the goal, it was winning enough to make sure the fan base bought tickets and stayed invested. With Smith, winning a title seems like the real goal. Yes, Smith wants to make money and keeps making moves to improve his investment, like arena investments with suites and upgrades, etc. But Smith was willing to take the hit of tanking to get the talent that could drive the Jazz into contention. It’s admirable the willingness to allow the Ainge’s to make the tough decisions that have to be made to get the talent necessary to win.
Considering all that, I personally lean toward wanting Smith to get the team. He’s proven to be a high-level owner who can help a team really compete.
Utah Jazz Media Day is here!
The Utah Jazz will have Media Day on Monday, September 28th.
It’s here, and then training camp will begin! Speaking of training camp…
Utah’s training camp roster is here
The Utah Jazz training camp roster is now set, with 20 roster spots filled.
It’s a massive training camp for the Jazz, who are now switching gears to compete for playoff contention and more. Players like Darryn Peterson and Ace Bailey will have to prove they can start. On my recent podcast with Shreyas Laddha, we discussed the potential starting lineup. The biggest thing is that the Jazz have said that they don’t know who is starting yet. That starting unit isn’t set. Will Peterson and Bailey prove they’re the ones who should be starting? We’ll find out.
Delta Center renovations are done
The Delta Center renovations appear ready for the upcoming season.
The arena continues to be upgraded to make more money improve the experience for fans. It looks like this will actually be a nice upgrade for Utah Mammoth fans, mostly.
The new renovations also included new food options at the arena.
It should be a lot of fun at the arena this year!!
