New Orleans Jazz Team History

On March 7, 1974, New Orleans became the 18th member of the NBA as a nine-man group headed by Fred Rosenfeld and Sam Battistone paid $6.15 million for the expansion franchise. Then on May 3, 1974, Pete Maravich was acquired by trade from Atlanta, becoming the first player in franchise history.

That spring, a contest was held to name the expansion team. Of the more than 6,500 names submitted, eight semi-finalists emerged: Jazz, Dukes, Crescents, Pilots, Cajuns, Blues, Deltas, and Knights.

After much deliberation, team officials announced that the new team name would be the New Orleans Jazz on June 7, 1974.

Three contestants had entered the Jazz name with the same postmark date, so team officials had Miss New Orleans 1974, Kay Johnson, choose a winner out of a hopper. That winner was Steve Brown, a 27-year-old broker and transplant New Yorker.

Brown, a self-proclaimed Jazz freak who had once played in a league with Julius Irving, said, I grew up on Knickerbocker basketball, but this is my team now.” He received two Jazz season tickets and a trip to the 1975 NBA All-Star Game in Phoenix.

As the undisputed “jazz capital of the world”, the city embraced the new name. And, for the second time, Jazz had been born in New Orleans. To convey a distinct Mardi Gras theme, purple gold, and green colors were used and the logo featured the ‘J’ as an eighth note. The team colors were actually selected prior to the name.

In the summer of 1974, an expansion franchise was preparing for its first season of competition in the NBA. The New Orleans Jazz were looking for something or someone to generate excitement among their new basketball fans. With his exciting style of play, Maravich was seen as the perfect man for the job. Additionally, he was already a celebrity in the state due to accomplishments at LSU. To acquire Maravich, the Jazz traded two players and four draft picks to Atlanta.

The expansion team struggled mightily in its first season. Maravich managed to score 21.5 points per game, but shot a career-worst 41.9 percent from the floor. The Jazz posted a 23–59 record, worst in the NBA.

Jazz management did its best to give Maravich a better supporting cast. The team posted a 38–44 record in its second season (1975 – 1976) but did not qualify for postseason play, despite the dramatic improvement. Maravich struggled with injuries that limited him to just 62 games that season, but he averaged 25.9 points per contest (third behind Macadoo and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and continued his crowd-pleasing antics. He was elected to the All-NBA First Team that year.

The following season (1976 – 1977) was his most productive in the NBA. He led the league in scoring with an average of 31.1 points per game. He scored 40 points or more in 13 different games, and 50 or more in 4 games. His 68-point masterpiece against the Knicks was at the time the most points ever scored by a guard in a single game, and only two players at any position had ever scored more: Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor.[25] Baylor was head coach of the Jazz at that time.

Despite being barely competitive, the Jazz drew well during their first five years. However, by 1979 the franchise was sinking financially. Barry Mendelson, the team’s executive vice president for most of the early years, said one factor in the financial trouble was an 11 percent amusement tax, highest in the U.S. at the time. The team also could not attract much local corporate support—an important factor even in those days—or local investors.

Battistone concluded that the franchise could not be viable in New Orleans and decided to move elsewhere. After scouting several new homes, he decided to move the team to Salt Lake City, even though it was a smaller market. Salt Lake City had previously been home to the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association (ABA) from 1970 to 1976. The Stars had been extremely popular in the city and had even won an ABA title in their first season after moving from Los Angeles. However, their finances collapsed in their last two seasons, and they were shut down by the league 16 games into the 1975 – 1976 season after missing payroll. Although Salt Lake City was not known for its jazz culture, the team decided to keep the name, as well as the team’s original colors of green, purple, and gold (the colors of Mardi Gras).