Utah Jazz

The Jazz were founded in New Orleans in 1974, and while the name made perfect sense in the birthplace of jazz music, the franchise struggled mightily in its early years. The team won just 23 games in its inaugural season and never exceeded 39 wins during its five years in the Big Easy. "Pistol Pete" Maravich was the franchise's lone star, his dazzling ballhandling and scoring providing entertainment even on terrible teams.

Maravich was one of the most creative players in basketball history, but his brilliance couldn't mask the organization's broader problems. Low attendance, financial difficulties, and the inability to attract top talent in a football-dominated market led to the franchise's relocation to Salt Lake City in 1979.

The move kept the "Jazz" name - an odd fit for Utah, which is about as far from the jazz clubs of New Orleans as you can get - but the franchise would soon build an identity perfectly suited to its new home: fundamentally sound, relentlessly tough, and built on partnership.

John Stockton, drafted 16th overall in 1984, and Karl Malone, drafted 13th in 1985, formed the most prolific partnership in NBA history. Stockton became the all-time leader in assists and steals - records that may never be broken - while Malone became the second-leading scorer in NBA history. Their pick-and-roll was basketball's most unstoppable play: Stockton's pinpoint passing into Malone's powerful finishing was a combination that defenses could see coming but couldn't stop.

The duo, coached by the legendary Jerry Sloan - one of the toughest and most principled coaches in NBA history - led the Jazz to the playoffs every year from 1984 to 2003 and to consecutive NBA Finals appearances in 1997 and 1998. Both times, they ran into Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. The 1997 Finals featured Stockton's legendary buzzer-beating three in Game 6 to force Game 7, and the 1998 Finals ended with Jordan's iconic last shot - a pull-up jumper that sealed Chicago's sixth title.

Stockton retired in 2003 and Malone departed for the Lakers the same year. They never won a championship, but their two-decade partnership produced a level of sustained excellence that few franchises have ever matched.

After the departures of Stockton, Malone, and eventually Jerry Sloan, the Jazz entered a transitional period. Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams provided competitive playoff teams in the late 2000s, reaching the Western Conference Finals in 2007, but the franchise was searching for its next identity.

Sloan's resignation midseason in 2011 - after 23 years on the bench - marked the definitive end of an era. The subsequent years brought rebuilding, with the Jazz accumulating young talent through the draft, including Rudy Gobert (drafted 27th in 2013) and Donovan Mitchell (drafted 13th in 2017).

The Jazz built one of the league's best regular-season teams around Mitchell's scoring and Gobert's defensive dominance, winning 52 games in 2020-21. But playoff shortcomings - particularly an inability to translate regular-season success into deep runs - led to the dismantling of the core.