WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT SALT LAKE CITY UTAH BECAME THE EVENTUAL HOME OF THE SOUTHERN-BORN JAZZ 8 WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT
PETE MARAVICH The city of New Orleans Louisiana is an ongoing party of revelry gumbo and jazz founded by French explorers in bayou territory deep in the American South Salt Lake City Utah has a clean religious feel founded as it was in the mountain and high-desert terrain of the American West by Brigham Young the leader of the Latter Day Saints for what has become the Mormon Church So what on earth could these two very different cities have in common One needs to go back to the 1970s to uncover an answer The year specifically was 1974 when a new National Basketball Association NBA franchise began play in New Orleans Ownership invoked an instant sense of historical pride when it named its new team the Jazz in honor of the only major form of music to be invented in the United States and birthed in New Orleans In keeping with 9
GUARD CARL NICKS ENTERED THE NBA AFTER A STANDOUT CAREER AT INDIANA STATE 10
COURTSIDE STORIES Raindrops Keep Falling On November 5 1975 a rainstorm of biblical proportions spilled from the Louisiana sky flooding streets and putting the city of New Orleans into a sort of nautical gridlock Jazz players didn’t know whether to head to the arena for that evening’s game in their cars or by boat The opening tip was delayed 30 minutes but by the time a rain-soaked crowd of 26,511 finally made its way into the Louisiana Superdome to see the second-year Jazz take on the Los Angeles Lakers and center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar an NBA single-game attendance record had been set The new record eclipsed the old mark of 20,239 set the previous season in Cleveland when the Cavaliers played the New York Knicks It might’ve been 30,000 if we hadn’t had the greatest rain since Noah’s Ark said Jazz star guard Pete Maravich who posted 30 points 7 assists and 5 rebounds on the night to lead New Orleans to a thrilling 113 110 victory The Jazz would go on to draw a new franchise-record crowd of 35,077 on November 30 1977 in a 117 114 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers 11 Raindrops Keep Falling
