1979: Welcome to Utah!

“Now We Has the Jazz” the Salt Lake Tribune proudly declared on June 9, 1979! Who needs proper grammar when you have a good rhyme in your headline? And the people of Salt Lake City had every reason to rejoice. After years of dreaming, wishing, praying, begging, and scheming, the NBA had finally arrived in the state of Utah! But before I can get to that, I need to talk about Jazz’s final season in New Orleans.

Pete Maravich, seen here sneaking past Larry Bird, had a long recovery from knee surgery in 1978. While growing restless in the hospital, he gave a bizarre interview on his latest obsession: nutrition. Pistol theorized that he could have grown to 6-foot-8 instead of topping out at 6-5 had he been given a better diet growing up. So at the age of 30, he embarked on a new nutrition regiment that he believed would help him live to 100 and keep playing basketball until he was 50. This diet included abstaining from salt and sugar (except for beer), severely limiting red meat, and ending each night with a tall glass of raw, unpasteurized milk. Now, I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure drinking lots of raw milk can’t be too good for a body trying to recover from surgery.

At the very least, Maravich’s new diet didn’t seem to increase Maravich’s ability to stay on the court. He was limited to 49 games — the fewest he’d played in a season so far. But he was named an All-Star again with 22.6 points, 5.0 assists, and 1.2 steals per game. It was the fifth, and sadly final, time he received that honor.

Truck Robinson got off to another strong start, averaging 24.2 points, 13.4 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per game. Unfortunately, Truck wasn’t happy in New Orleans. He didn’t like Maravich and how he got all the attention. He didn’t like his contract and tried to renegotiate it. But his former agent, Lewis Schaffel, was no longer the general manager for the Jazz. And the owners of the Jazz were so strapped for cash that they were preoccupied with moving or selling the team — not giving any of their players more money, regardless of how good they were. So new GM Tom Willingham was forced to send Robinson to Phoenix for Marty Byrnes, Ron Lee, a 1979 first-round pick, and a 1980 first-round pick.

Robinson made one more All-Star team with the Suns, but was eventually traded to New York, where his career trailed off. He eventually retired in 1985, never having returned to the level of play he displayed in that one magical season for the New Orleans Jazz. But he did made it back to the NBA as an assistant coach for Sacramento from 2009 to 2012.

Spencer Haywood was acquired by the Jazz just one week before they traded Robinson away. And I have to think that was somewhat intentional. Perhaps Willingham was negotiating with Phoenix for a while and realized he was only going to get role players for Truck, so he decided to quickly seek a replacement for the star power forward. In any case, Haywood did fill Robinson’s role rather nicely with 24.0 ppg, 9.6 rpg, and 1.6 bpg in 34 games for the Jazz.

Haywood was born in a small town in Mississippi and lived in abject poverty as his father died three months before he was born and his mother struggled to provide for all 11 of her children. By the time he was a high schooler, Haywood was living with one of his brothers in Detroit. He initially enrolled at Trinidad State College in Colorado and played well enough to earn a spot on the 1968 Olympic team. (Maravich also attended the Olympic tryouts, but didn’t make the team.) Haywood helped Team USA win a gold medal in Mexico City, then transferred to the University of Detroit Mercy.

Haywood sought to leave college early, but was denied by the NBA. The ABA also had a rule against underclassmen at the time, but they decided to create a new hardship exception for players living in poverty. (Former Utah State and Jazz player Nate Williams later benefitted from this rule.) Haywood was picked by Denver, where he put up an inconceivable 30.0 ppg and 19.5 rpg en route to winning not only the Rookie of the Year, but also the MVP. 

The next year, Haywood decided to join the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics. This required him to file a lawsuit against the league, which he won. Haywood was a four-time All-Star in Seattle and a two-time member of the All-NBA First Team. But then he began to decline and was traded to the Knicks. Sometimes it’s a complete mystery for me to figure out why some players from 50 years ago started slipping at a relatively young age. For Haywood, there is no mystery, as he publicly confessed to an addiction to cocaine.

And that’s probably why the Jazz were able to acquire Haywood for just the low price of an underperforming big man named Joe Meriweather. New Orleans had sent Atlanta a 1978 first-round pick for Meriweather back in 1977, but he was frequently injured and unable to win the starting center job over Kelley. Haywood, though, enjoyed a bit of a revival in New Orleans, having increased his scoring average to the highest level it had been since 1973. Coincidentally, he was also a huge fan of jazz music and even hosted weekly jazz shows on the radio in Seattle and New York.

But Haywood was not a huge fan of the idea of moving to Utah. I’ll get more into that later, but for now I’ll just say that he was traded to the Lakers, where his cocaine addiction grew even worse. His production reached an all-time low and he was dismissed from the team during the 1980 Finals for falling asleep in practice. Haywood then went to Italy for a year and attempted an NBA comeback with Washington, which lasted two seasons. In 2007, his jersey was retired by the Sonics and in 2015, he was finally elected into the Hall of Fame.

Gail Goodrich managed to play in 74 games in his last season for the Jazz, putting up 12.7 ppg and 1.2 spg. Unlike Haywood, Goodrich actually expressed excitement in the prospect of moving to Utah, as he already owned a home in Sundance. But he was a free agent and the new general manager of the Jazz wasn’t interested in negotiating a new contract, choosing to wish the former All-Star luck in finding his way back onto a contender. I don’t know if any other teams expressed any interest in Goodrich, but at the end of the day, he did retire from basketball in 1979.

Goodrich moved to Connecticut, where he became an executive in a golf company and studio analyst for NBA TV. In 1996, he was elected into the Hall of Fame and had his jersey retired by the Lakers. And the worst consequence of him initially joining the Jazz is just around the corner!

Rich Kelley, now sporting a full beard, was the most consistent player for the Jazz this year. He was the only Jazzman to play 80 games, and he put up 15.7 ppg, 12.8 rpg, 2.1 bpg, and 1.6 spg. When the move to Utah was announced, Kelley was somewhere between Haywood and Goodrich — not necessarily opposed to relocating, but also openly lamenting the fact that he had just bought a new house in New Orleans. He also declined a contract extension, meaning he would become a free agent in 1980. Not wanting to risk losing Kelley after just one season in Utah, the new GM decided to send him to New Jersey in a rather fascinating trade that I will detail later. And we actually will see Kelley again in a few years.

But before I get ahead of myself I need to wrap up the 1978-79 season. As you can see, a few Jazz players did put up some big numbers. But I think you could call those empty stats, as their performance didn’t translate into a lot of wins. In fact, New Orleans finished with the worst record in the league at 26-56. Worse still, was the mounting financial losses had pushed the franchise to its breaking point. And the original nine-man ownership group had now been consolidated to just two.

Sam Battistone Jr. and Larry Hatfield were both native of Santa Barbara, California, who worked in the restaurant industry. As you’ll remember, Battistone was the heir to the Sambo’s breakfast diner chain, while Hatfield seemed to operate some sort of restaurant supplier business that worked closely with Sambo’s. The two of them never moved to New Orleans and allegedly only listened to Jazz games on the radio in their cars in California. Even though Battistone held the majority of the shares, Hatfield became the driving force of the Jazz and was almost always the one who spoke with the newspaper reporters. Including in the dramatic announcement made on April 11, 1979.

In a move that seems to have surprised everyone, Hatfield announced plans to move the franchise to Salt Lake City. The Utah Pros were understandably devastated and tried desperately to move to Anaheim (which would have been a fun return to the start of my story) or Albuquerque. But as we all know, those plans fell through and the Prospectors (along with their entire league) were forced to fold. Hatfield, meanwhile, heaped praise on the Salt Palace and the history of the Utah Stars. He said that Salt Lake was the only city they considered in the West, which I find to be an unusually specific choice of words. Although Hatfield and Battistone were loathe to admit it, all evidence suggests that Salt Lake was pretty much their last resort. Larger, more lucrative markets like Miami, Minneapolis, or even Toronto would have been much more ideal locations. But I suspect none of them had that one crucial component that Salt Lake had — a place to play. Although the Salt Palace was beginning to show its age, it once again was able to be the primary driving force of professional sports in Utah. So really, when it all comes down to it, I think the biggest factor in bringing the NBA to Utah was the state’s desire to host the 1972 Winter Olympics.

One week after this stunning news dropped, the NBA held a coin toss between the worst teams of each conference to determine who would get the No. 1 overall pick. This was an especially anticipated event, as a generational talent named Magic Johnson was on board. It should have been the Jazz flipping against the Chicago Bulls, but because of that accursed Goodrich transaction, the pick belonged to the Lakers. Well, L.A. won the coin toss (and an eventual five championships), while the Jazz were left out in the cold.

So what would have happened had the Jazz been able to draft Magic Johnson? One theory is that he would have drawn large, excited crowds to Salt Lake. But I think there’s a real possibility that Johnson could have singlehandedly kept the Jazz in New Orleans. As soon as Hatfield and Battistone announced their intention to leave, the city of New Orleans put up a mad scramble to save its team. The Louisiana Superdome filed a lawsuit against the Jazz, and the mayor worked to repeal a hefty entertainment tax that had been plaguing the team. But it was too little too late. There was even an effort for some local investors to buy the Jazz. But Battistone was asking for $12 million for the franchise that had cost $6.5 million just five years earlier. (Just like the Stars, we have a franchise that kept increasing in value, despite losing lots of money.) Anyway, I think the possibility of landing a one-in-a-lifetime talent like Magic Johnson would have convinced the Jazz to at least pause their relocation plans. And if that failed, then the forces fighting against the move would have had a lot more ammunition.

The NBA also wasn’t terribly keen on the idea of moving to Salt Lake. In their defense, there was one strong argument against the move. The lowest attendance numbers for the Jazz in the Superdome were actually higher than the highest attendance numbers for the Stars in the Salt Palace. So there was no guarantee that the Jazz would actually be viable in Utah. Between this and the lawsuit and everything else, the league spent a solid two months debating the move.

In the meantime, Hatfield and Battistone got busy overhauling their team. Even if they weren’t going to move, they were at least going to give themselves a clean slate. Tom Willingham was out as general manager and Elgin Baylor was gone as head coach. Baylor never did coach again, but in 1986, he became a vice president for the Los Angeles Clippers. He held that role for 22 years and was once named Executive of the Year in 2006. But then he was fired in 2008 and subsequently filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Clippers, which he lost. But none of that diminished his legacy as a player. He was elected into the Hall of Fame, and the Lakers not only retired his jersey, but erected a statue of him. Baylor died in 2021 at age 86.

For the first time in franchise history, the Jazz decided to look outside their organization for their new general manager. No longer would they just grab one of their random executives, who also happened to be a former agent. And the man they picked turned out to be one of the most important people in the history of professional basketball in Utah.

Frank Layden was born and raised in Brooklyn before becoming a basketball and baseball player at Niagara University. He coached their baseball team for a couple of years after graduating in 1953, but then dropped down to the high school level until 1966, when he became the athletic director for Adelphi Suffolk College in Long Island, New York. In 1968, he was named the head coach of the Niagara basketball team, and he held that position for eight years.

In 1976, Layden joined his former Niagara teammate, Hubie Brown, as an assistant coach for the Atlanta Hawks. Since Layden was also the team’s director of player personnel, he liked to spend his off days by traveling to other teams to scout their players. His favorite destination was nearby New Orleans, as he could fly down there at 3 p.m., catch the game, then fly back home and be in his own bed in Atlanta by midnight. In fact, Layden made that trip so many times, that he became close friends to all the Jazz officials.

When Hatfield and Battistone offered him the general manager position, he asked if he could also be the head coach, but they denied him that dual role. Layden also expressed some concerns about their plans of moving to Utah, as his wife was dead-set against living in Salt Lake City. But Battistone personally assured Layden and his wife that they would only be in Utah for three, maybe four years at most. And seeing what Battistone did in the next three or four years, I’m inclined to believe that it was always his original plan to use Salt Lake as merely a temporary stopgap until he could move the franchise to a larger market.

Since the Jazz owners didn’t want Layden to also be their coach, they had to go out and find somebody new. Assistant Bill Bertka remained on the staff (in fact, he was one of the few people who made the move to Utah), but for whatever reason he was never in the running for the head job. Former Weber State and Utah State alum Phil Johnson was, though. He had been the Coach of the Year in 1975 for the Kings, but in 1979, he turned down the Jazz to be an assistant in Chicago under Jerry Sloan (remember those names!). Instead, the Jazz went with a familiar face.

Tom Nissalke, the last coach of the Utah Stars, ended up becoming the first coach of the Utah Jazz. After the Stars folded, he randomly became the coach of the Puerto Rico Olympic team. He then took over the Houston Rockets, where he won Coach of the Year in 1977. But he couldn’t sustain that success and was fired in 1979, just in time for the Jazz to scoop him up.

Of course, when Layden and Nissalke were hired, there was a distinct possibility that they would have to work in New Orleans. But after weeks and weeks of deliberations and fending off lawsuits and consolidating finances and rejecting offers, the move to Salt Lake City was finally approved. And this happy occasion was celebrated with an awkward press conference!

Why did Battistone and Hatfield look so grumpy? And what was with those massive leis around their necks? This is Utah, not Hawaii! Anyway, the people of Utah really were excited to have their own NBA team. And the only question now was what to call it. Nissalke lobbied for a revival of the Stars name, but I think there’s a chance that Bill Daniels could have still owned the rights to it and Battistone was never going to pay for that. And there’s a small chance this also applied to my favorite unused nickname, the Utah Rockies (but with the Silnas). There was a call for a fan vote, the traditional method of naming a team, but Battistone had no intentions of honoring the results. And in this case, I don’t blame him, since the winning name was incredibly stupid. The good people of Salt Lake really wanted their NBA team to be called the Utah Saints. Funnily enough, I was able to find one New York Times article that actually used that name.

Obviously the name became the Utah Jazz. Unlike the Stars, which chose the state name in a misguided attempt to play home games throughout Utah, the Jazz readily admitted they just chose Utah because it was shorter and easier to say than Salt Lake City. And the newspaper editors rejoiced at having a short team name for their headlines. No joke. I found actual articles that specifically mentioned that, and as a former headline writer myself, I totally get it.

In later years, Battistone gave lofty answers about how he kept the Jazz name because he wanted to redeem it after five frustrating years in New Orleans. But in reality, he and Hatfield were just too lazy to change it. Granted, they didn’t have much time to develop a new brand identity for their franchise, but they didn’t have to openly brag about how they wouldn’t need to change their uniforms. I also think a major motivating factor was Battistone’s long-term plan to move the Jazz again after a few years. Why bother renaming a team if it was only going to stick around for three seasons? And thus, the Utah Jazz were born.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. “The Utah should be purple!” Well, I’ll have you know that in all the game programs and ticket stubs I could find from 1979, the Utah was in black, just as the New Orleans was black in the original logo. Anyway, I still think it’s an absolutely beautiful logo and the Utah actually looks cleaner up there than the New Orleans did.

The uniforms didn’t change at all, which made Battistone and Hatfield quite happy. If the name New Orleans had been anywhere on those jerseys, then the owners would have been forced to spend some money to redesign them. And once again, their laziness and frugality worked out in their favor. These were very solid uniforms that didn’t need any tampering.

Well, there was no rest for the weary here. Just one week after finalizing their move to Salt Lake, the Jazz had to participate in the NBA Draft. Very few people made the move from New Orleans — radio and TV broadcaster Hot Rod Hundley was one, as was assistant coach/director of player personnel Bill Bertka. Bertka was allegedly supposed to help Layden prepare for the 20th pick (which Utah got from the Truck Robinson trade), but I don’t know if he just goofed or if Layden overruled him and wanted to establish a name for himself as the new GM. In either case, the Jazz began their stint in Utah by making one of the worst draft picks in franchise history.

Larry Knight was born and raised in Detroit and began his college career at Ellsworth Community College in Iowa. After two seasons, he transferred to Loyola Chicago, where he averaged 17.6 points and 13.5 rebounds per game. Perhaps Layden was impressed by those numbers but failed to take into account the weak competition Knight played against, as well as his slight 6-8 frame. Or maybe Knight would have actually had the chance of putting together a decent NBA career had he not shot himself in the foot (figuratively, not literally).

For some reason, Knight chose to play hardball with the Jazz and held out of the rookie/free agent camp in July. When he finally joined the team in the preseason, Knight fully admitted that he was not in shape. And Layden demonstrated early on that he was not willing to mess around with contract disputes. So he cut Knight after just two preseason games. And Knight never played in an NBA regular season game, spending the next seven years bouncing around in minor leagues and overseas.

So that was not the best way for Layden to begin his general manager career. But he did actually redeem himself with some of his other offseason moves. And boy, was he busy! Of the 15 players who suited up for the New Orleans Jazz in 1978-79, only two of them played for the Utah Jazz in 1979-80 — Pete Maravich and James Hardy. We certainly have a lot more to talk about, but this post has already gone on long enough. Until next time, when we find out how the Jazz did in their first season in Utah!