Utah Jazz: The ten most golden moments in franchise history

10. Old school Jazz make the playoffs

Back in the day, things weren’t so pretty for the Utah Jazz.

After moving from New Orleans to Utah in 1979, the Utah Jazz endured two straight seasons of losing under head coach Tom Nissalke. 20 games into Nissalke’s third season, Frank Layden took over the head coaching duties.

The team still sputtered to just 30 wins in Frank’s first full season as head coach, but the very next season Frank would guide the team to their first playoff berth, winning both the Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year awards.

The Utah Jazz won 45 games and were on top of the mid-west division in 1983-84, which guaranteed them a high seed in the playoffs. They beat the Denver Nuggets in the first round three games to two but fell to the Phoenix Suns in the conference semi-finals two games to four.

Thanks to Adrian Dantley and his unstoppable 36 points per game (with very few 3-pointers, mind you), Frank Layden was able to lift this team into relevance after years of being the laughingstock in a small market. It’s even more impressive when you consider that only two players on this young roster were in their thirties.

Mark Eaton was in his second year as a pro, after being discovered as a raw talent crouched under the hood of a car. “You can’t teach height” were the famous words Layden used as reasoning for picking up the big man in the fourth round of the 1982 NBA draft.

Darrell Griffith, or “Dr. Dunkenstein” as I like to call him, was in the fourth year of his promising NBA career. Another key component of that team was point guard Rickey Green, who would help mentor a young John Stockton and hand the reins of the team over to the young point guard out of Gonzaga.

Were it not for this 1984 team making a run in the playoffs, I’m not sure the Jazz would even be in Utah right now.