Ron Boone (far left), Jeff Wilkins, Rickey Green (middle), Thurl Bailey, Darrell Griffith (far ... [+]
Last season marked the Utah Jazz’s 50th season as an organization (their 45th in Utah). To commemorate this joyous occasion, the organization has partnered with Emmy-winning creative agency Heart & Hustle Productions to create a 90-minute documentary to cover the last five decades of Jazz basketball.
“Every generation is as meaningful as the next. So, it is important to remember all the generations of Jazz basketball. It’s important that new fans/players know and understand the history of their team,” Andrei Kirilenko, a former All-Star and All-Defensive Team selection, told me in an exclusive interview. “By passing these memories down from generation to generation, you create something more than a team/brand. You create a symbol that people hold on to and carry with them throughout their lives.”
The film — “Note Worthy: 50 Seasons of Jazz Basketball” — was directed by Rashad Floyd — the Founder of Heart & Hustle Productions and a former professional football player (playing both Canadian and American Arena Football).
Despite not growing up in the Utah area, Floyd was the perfect person to tell the story because of his athletic background (which helps him relate to many of the individuals he’s interviewing) and objectivity toward the subject.
“It was important for the franchise to have someone on the outside who didn’t have hometown biases and could tell the stories from a reasonable perspective,” Floyd told me in an interview for Forbes.
Will Hardy, Utah Jazz.
Besides, Floyd had all the Jazz lore he needed thanks to his Story Producer, JP Chunga. Along with his role in the making of the film, Chunga has been with the Jazz since 2019. In his day-to-day role, Chunga handles podcasts, social media, and digital content, and he serves as the team historian (a title he humbly refuses to acknowledge but one everyone within the organization identifies him as).
With the support of Chunga and the rest of the Jazz creative services, production, and content teams, Floyd and Heart & Hustle were armed to the teeth with background information about all 70 of the people he spoke with to craft this story. Still, Floyd chose to sit back and let the people who lived the story be the ones who told it — a wrinkle that will become immediately apparent to viewers as the documentary features very little directorial narration (an uncommon practice, especially for sports documentaries).
“Documentaries are only as good as their storytellers,” Floyd explained. “Even though [Chunga] did a great job of preparing us for every major moment of Jazz history, we made sure to let the people we were interviewing be the ones to tell the story. Very rarely do you hear my voice in the story.”
The documentary takes you through the entire history of the Jazz — starting in their early days as the New Orleans Jazz and culminating in the iteration of the team that will be suiting up this upcoming season.
While it brushes over the entire breadth of Jazz basketball, the story is centered around major checkpoints of the franchise’s story — their first serious playoff run, the Mark Eaton years (Kirilenko’s favorite part of the documentary), the John Stockton/Karl Malone era, the Deron Williams/Carlos Boozer era, and the Donovan Mitchell/Rudy Gobert era. And while all these moments are being revisited, we are simultaneously being brought back to the present day and the current iteration of Jazz basketball.
Each chapter comes with unique insights, ones that even the most diehard Jazz fans have never seen/heard before.
“There is something here for every level of fan. I even learned along the way,” Chunga told me in an interview. “For instance, I’ve never seen Stockton get so emotional talking about the shot. We all know how much the shot meant to us, but we didn’t really know how much the shot meant to Stockton.”
The candidness of the participants is a testament to Floyd’s ability to make the people in the chairs feel comfortable, as is his knack for giving them the keys to unlocking their memories from those distant times.
“For a majority of our interviews, we had projectors up in the background to enable them to relive those moments, let them sink in, and then allow them to speak on it,” Floyd said. “It was therapeutic for a lot of players.”
“One of my favorite moments in the film is when Jeff Hornacek is just looking through highlights of his career, and he says, ‘What I miss most is the camaraderie and being around people.’ You're seeing a lot of authentic moments like this being captured throughout this entire documentary,” Chunga added.
Speaking of Stockton and Malone, the more towering figure of that tandem emerged as one of the main protagonists of the movie. On the surface, this seems like common sense. Why not build the story of your team around its all-time leading scorer (eighth all-time in the entire NBA) and best player ever?
But more than his status on the leaderboards, Malone spoke about his relationship with the team and the racial undertones of the city/state like never before. Prior to his interview, he informed Floyd that this was the last interview he would ever give, and he followed up that statement by giving the media performance of his life.
Any creative person will tell you that you can’t include all the information you gather during research, and Malone’s contributions to all this were no exception to the rule.
“In the film, the quote is cut at ‘Isn’t it ironic?’ However, the full quote reads, ‘Isn’t it ironic that I came all the way from the South to Salt Lake City, where my coach became more of a father figure to me than my own dad? A white man became more of a father figure to me than my own dad,’” Floyd revealed to me.
Karl Malone Interview.
This gets at the complicated relationship between the State of Utah and its team. As a homogenous region known for antiquated politics, the state has been able to move forward by embracing the athletes who have graced the hardwood for their precious team. Nowadays, the organization has progressed so much that they were one of the first teams to take a knee during The Bubble — another significant plotline in the documentary.
As for scenes that didn’t make it out of the editing room, my personal favorite that was shared with me during my conversations was a segment of Williams and Boozer taking people through how they ran their iconic pick-and-roll and all the reasons it was so dangerous.
“In fact, one of the things that Jerry Sloan and Williams clashed about is what side of the court they would run pick-and-roll on – Williams liked to run it on one side, and Sloan preferred it on the other,” Floyd added.
Despite not having that part in there, the crew did a great job highlighting those mid-2000s Jazz teams (a staple of my childhood). Alumni from that era, like Kirilenko, were especially pleased with this part of the story and the documentary as a whole.
Kirilenko is a special figure in the annals of Jazz history, serving as a bridge from one generation to the next. His career in Utah spanned a decade, with the early part overlapping with Stockton and Malone and the tail end coinciding with the pinnacle of the Williams and Boozer connection.
“For me, it is a huge honor to be a part of the history of the Jazz. Imagine a kid growing up on a little street in St. Petersburg, Russia – a place that didn’t really have anyone going on to have a successful NBA career – playing ten years with the Jazz and having a chance to play with one of the best coaches ever and both of the Jazz’s legendary duos: Stockton/Malone and Williams/Boozer,” Kirilenko told me.
Deron Williams (left) & Carlos Boozer (right).
Few teams have ever celebrated a franchise anniversary the way the Jazz have here.
“We looked a lot at what the San Antonio Spurs did to celebrate their history. They had people internally create videos commemorating moments in their history. But we saw something a little bit bigger, and that’s why we brought in Heart & Hustle Productions,” Chunga explained. “I don’t know of any other franchise who has done anything to celebrate their history like this. For SEG Media and the entire organization to get behind an idea like this is unheard of.”
Funny enough, Chunga was kind of the one who gave birth to this idea. Knowing that the 50th anniversary was coming up, he had the thought of creating a podcast series to reflect on the last five decades. This, of course, became something much, much larger.
“It’s insane that an organization saw an idea of creating a podcast to celebrate 50 years and said, ‘Dream bigger. Go bigger.’ And turned it into a 90-minute documentary,” Chunga said.
Unlike many documentaries, this vehicle won’t exist on a mainstream streaming service. On Monday, August 12, it was released to those who subscribed to Jazz+. Then, the following day, it was uploaded on their YouTube channel for the rest of the fanbase to enjoy.
“Early in the production, there were conversations about having this live on Netflix or another streaming service. But in order to have a documentary on one of those mediums, you need it to be controversial, which forces you to tell the story in ways you don’t necessarily want to,” Floyd explained. “So, we decided not to worry about all that and instead focus on telling the truth and doing right by our history.”
To their credit, Ryan and Ashley Smith (the team’s owners) and the rest of SEG Media were not concerned with maximizing profits. Their sole goal in all this was to honor this state and all the Jazz folks who wear their fandom like a medal of honor.
“It truly was a love letter to the fans,” Chunga said.
If you want to watch “Note Worthy: 50 Seasons of Jazz Basketball” for free, be sure to visit this link here.