After all, why would the NHL’s Colorado franchise retain
“Rockies” when moving to swampland whose most mountainous feature is the New
Jersey Turnpike rising over the Hackensack River? Just as
And the Dallas Texans would have been dang suicidal not to
have switched to the “Chiefs” upon arrival deep in the heart of Kansas City.
So it is perplexing that the NBA’s
Utah, and specifically Salt Lake City, is both the temporal
and spiritual home of Mormonism. Mormonism, like most religions, is—at least in
principle—a strictly codified belief system. In Mormonism’s case, guided by its
13 Articles of Faith. Its Book of Mormon contains a “history” far older than
Christianity and is supplemented by lengthy scriptures such as the Doctrine and
Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. All in all, the Book of Mormon
seems—from its own sources as well as interviews with “average” members of the
Church of Latter-Day Saints—to be a highly regimented template of conducting
one’s life righteously and steering clear of sin (even though Mormonism’s
founder, Joseph Smith, and his polygamous congregation lived lives that
made them—even by standards
of their day—outcasts of
mainstream Christianity).
So, it goes without saying that straight-laced Salt Lake
City—home of the Utah Jazz—bears no cultural resemblance
whatsoever to vivacious, hedonistic New Orleans. More to the point, jazz is the spiritual antithesis of
religion—this most improvisational of art forms thrives on its lack of
boundaries and its emphasis on personal expression. Whereas religion arose to
curb the chaos of an uncivilized populace, jazz embodies, musically, that very
chaos. Frankly, jazz never could have evolved in a button-down town such as
Salt Lake City or a state as conventional as Utah—only the melting-pot,
loose-moraled, devil-may-care streets of a city such as N’awlins could have
birthed this deeply emotive and unpredictable art form.
One need only look upon one of the great practitioners of personal expression on the basketball court, Pistol Pete Maravich—perhaps the John Coltrane of the hardwood—whose freewheeling style of play personified New Orleans and its Jazz franchise. Considering both that Pistol Pete was hardly the poster boy for Salt Lake City’s reverential atmosphere when he and his Jazz arrived in 1979 (Maravich was quoted in a biography of the same name as having no interest in Christianity during his playing days) and that, by 1979, Maravich’s days as a basketball virtuoso were behind him, it’s beyond baffling that Jazz owner Sam Battistone, Jr., didn’t rename the franchise.
So, why weren’t the Utah Jazz redubbed something closer to
the city’s—and by extension, the
state of Utah’s—heart?
Such as for what Salt Lake City is truly known—even more than its homegrown
religion and choir:
Salt, of course.
Long in the vanguard of team names utilizing a collective noun, Battistone could have continued that fashion by rechristening his NBA franchise the Utah Salt. After all, the Great Salt Lake—sitting just west of the city founded by Mormon bigwig Brigham Young—is larger than Rhode Island and, on occasion, Delaware, providing both Utah’s capital and the state, itself, with its foremost secular identity.
And the marketing opportunities didn’t end there. The Utah Salt
would be ripe for a third jersey: the “NaCl.” Similar to “NOLA” of New Orleans
renown, “NaCl” would represent both the chemical formula of table salt and,
when either read or spoken as a quasi-nickname for the team, a hip phonetic
reference to Salt Lake City’s famous Mormon TaberNACLE Choir.
Such a marketing plan even could have included the rallying
cry “Get the NaCl” to capitalize on the Get
the Knack album and its single, “My Sharona,” that debuted just four months
before the Utah Jazz played its first game and were each massive No. 1 hits by then. A lawsuit likely would have
ensued, but a quick settlement would have provided invaluable buzz for the
fledgling team and been well worth the legal wrangling.
Who could have predicted that young jazzmen going west would culminate in such a lost opportunity?
