Utah Jazz icon John Stockton recently admitted he hasn’t followed his former team in quite some time because he is frustrated with their penchant for losing many games and being seemingly stuck in an endless rebuild.
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“I haven’t been tracking them, but I know that there doesn’t seem to be a mission to win. If that’s true, that’s frustrating. Because I think that culture is so hard to come by,” Stockton told Cait Nielson on The Ultimate Assist show.
“I know how hard it was for the Utah Jazz to become a winning organization to begin with, and I came in on the tail end of that. I got to build from that with my teammates. But I wouldn’t give up that fight to win every single game, every single quarter, for anything – for future draft choices, for future anything. Because the future… it moves,” he added about the team’s apparent tanking.
During Stockton’s era, the Utah Jazz were a perennial contender in the Western Conference, unlike today. Stockton formed a dynamic partnership with Karl Malone and led the franchise to back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in 1997 and 1998, dueling against Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls.
Utah Jazz have the fewest national TV games this upcoming season
Utah aren’t expected to do much this upcoming season, so the league decided to give them the fewest nationally televised games, with only two.
Tied with the Utah Jazz are some rebuilding teams, including the Brooklyn Nets, New Orleans Pelicans, Washington Wizards, and the Toronto Raptors. The Chicago Bulls and Charlotte Hornets are above them with three such games.
Utah had the league’s worst record last season at 17-65, giving them a Top 5 lottery pick, which they used to select Ace Bailey from Rutgers this summer.
