Utah Jazz set to troll the Pelicans with their purple jerseys

The Utah Jazz’s recently released uniform schedule for the upcoming season revealed an epic trolling of the New Orleans Pelicans.

Much to the delight of fans in the 801, the Utah Jazz released a complete breakdown of when they’ll wear each of their various jerseys throughout the 2018-19 season on Friday. That includes the slate for the newly introduced Classic Edition kits; a purple, green and gold throwback to the Jazz squads of yesteryear.

It all looks like business as usual on the surface, until you dig into the schedule for the new, purple duds. To the discerning eye, one date in particular should stand out — March 4 against the New Orleans Pelicans. That’s the date of the Jazz band’s hardcore trolling of Anthony Davis and Co.

The date that the Jazz will wear NOLA’s own colors against them.

Armchair hoops historians can tell you that the Jazz originally emanated from New Orleans. That’s why the Jazz adopted purple, green and gold to begin with; they’re the colors of Mardi Gras and, by extension, the Big Easy itself. So when the team came to be in 1974, it was a no-brainer color combination.

After making the move to Utah, the team hung onto the scheme for its first decade-plus in Salt Lake City, but switched to something more in line with its own geography and cultural identity in the mid-’90s. Since that time, the purple, green and gold had remained on mothballs in the league’s back closet.

Until a few years ago, that is, when the Pelicans brought the colors back.

Ever since the Pels had risen from the ashes of the New Orleans Hornets, ownership had made a mission out of reclaiming that Big Easy flair. And the team’s late owner, Tom Benson, wasn’t content with getting just the colors. He tried to reclaim the Jazz name for New Orleans as well, a cause that others still champion to this day.

There are even some people in Utah that wonder why all this Jazz business continues to be a thing in the Beehive State. “Send the Jazz back to New Orleans, where it belongs,” the Deseret News’ Lee Benson once wrote.

But the team in Utah isn’t biting, and now it’s set to wear the NOLA-inspired purple, green and gold that had seemingly been reclaimed by the Pels into battle against them.

Incidental or not, that’s about as brutal a troll job as one NBA team can pull on another. Particularly when it’s being perpetrated against a squad that has already been leapfrogged in the conference pecking order.

It’s mean, it’s petty and for a get-off-my-lawn guy like me, it’s kind of amazing.