Salt Lake City is home to an MLS franchise, a minor league baseball team, and a wonderful girl whom I crushed on for many years. It was also the host city of the 2002 Winter Olympics. But we're not going to discuss any of that...
Next season will be the 40th for the Jazz in Utah. They were Western Conference champions in 1997 and 1998. I was so mad when they lost both NBA Finals to Michael Jordan and the Bulls-especially after The Shove...er, I mean The Shot.
Karl Malone and John Stockton were one of the greatest tandems in NBA history. They were teammates in Utah for 18 seasons - and on the 1992 U.S. Olympic "Dream Team."
I asked my mom to buy me a Karl Malone Fleer RC for Christmas one year, and sure enough she wrapped it in a small package and stuffed it in my stocking. Sadly, it's long gone from my collection.
True Colors is one of my favorite insert sets. I hunted for these on COMC before I truly got back to collecting NBA cards. Perhaps cards like these contributed to that commitment.
More Mailman. The middle two cards were acquired in a trade with Bo (Baseball Cards Come To Life). The bottom two cards - and all of the Panini Prizm singles you see in these posts - were sent to me by Jon (A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts).
Until two weeks ago I had twelve cards of #12 - six base cards...
...and six inserts. However there was a single John Stockton card in the box from Brad, so now I have a baker's dozen.
I only have one Jeff Hornacek Jazz card. Hornacek used to wipe the side of his face at the free throw line, as a way of acknowledging his kids. He also used to coach the Knicks (there's a joke about children in there somewhere but I'll let it slide.)
Shot blocker extraordinaire Mark Eaton was a Jazz star in the 80's. Darrell Griffith was one of the greatest players in Jazz history - at least according to his 1989-90 NBA Hoops card.
Early 90s Jazz, including a pair of Jerry Sloan. The Skybox Benoit was a repack pull. And speaking of repacks...
This Derrick Favors Prizm was the face card of a repack I picked out at Target a couple months ago. It was more appealing to me than the star player base cards that were showing on the other packs.
Favors also appears in my Jazz binder page, along with Ronnie Brewer and Alec Burks among others. I just saw an E:60 story about Carlos Boozer renting out his L.A. home to Prince while he was playing for the Jazz. Aside from the Hornacek Prizm, these are my most recent base cards - one page covers ten years.
Back when Andrei Kirilenko was playing, ESPN did a story on basketball WAGs (long before VH1 tackled that subject) and I remember his supermodel-looking wife saying she expected him to mess around on the road...so she gave him a Hall Pass on the air! He declined it of course. I'm not a firearms aficionado at all, but AK-47 is a badass nickname.
Since I don't have a lot of Jazz cards to discuss I pulled out some singles from my 2015-16 Donruss set build.While scanning them I noticed something very interesting on the back... do you see it? Isn't that odd?
I don't have any (other) Rudy Gobert cards in my collection, and I don't have any Gordon Hayward base cards - unless you count this super thick Immaculate single.
I don't, btw. Thick base cards go in my relics box, waiting for me to buy thicker top loaders (The comic book store near my work only has standard size.) These were all part of the COMC 500; the Excalibur relic ($1.22) cost slightly more than the Immaculate ($1)
This Tom Chambers autograph was another COMC purchase. When I saw these Shadowbox Signatures cards I had to have one. Missed out on a David Thompson Sonics card (sold for $5) and at $3.97 this was the cheapest card of a player I recognized. Chambers was the only eligible member of the 20,000-point club not in the Hall of Fame-until Antawn Jamison joined him.
When Hayward left the Jazz I was worried that they would slip back into mediocrity and miss the playoffs. Despite the natural beauty of Utah, Salt Lake City is not exactly a choice free agent destination (the night life is kind of a joke.) Then Donovan Mitchell arrived and now the future looks even brighter for the team.
I don't have any Mitchell rookie cards - something that must be addressed soon since he's a rising star, the NBA's true Rookie of the Year, and a Connecticut native.
Favorite Jazz player (current): Donovan Mitchell and Ricky Rubio
Favorite Jazz player (all-time): John Coltrane
Just kidding...it's Malone and Stockton, of course.
Next tour stop: San Antonio
Thanks for reading. Enjoy your weekend!
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