My sisters still make fun of me for it, but I don’t care. Sixteen years later, the scar remains where Scottie Pippen cut out my heart with surgical precision and mercilessly stomped it into the dirt.
On May 17, 2000, I was an awkward 12-year-old Utah Jazz fan. Pippen was a Portland Trail Blazer, two years removed from playing second fiddle to Michael Jordan as the Chicago Bulls defeated my Jazz in a second consecutive NBA Finals.
Jeff Hornacek, the Jazz’s undersized, overtough shooting guard, had announced his retirement effective at the end of Utah’s 2000 playoff run. And now they were down three games to one in a best-of-seven series against the Blazers, headed into a do-or-die Game 5 in Portland.
For now, though, Hornacek, Bryon Russell, John Stockton and Karl Malone were still Jazzmen, at least for one more game. To my prepubescent heart, little else mattered. These were my guys, and I was with them to the bitter end.
I sat on my bed, stared at my radio, and tried to will the Jazz to victory. It couldn’t end tonight; it just couldn’t. If Hornacek left, the others would soon follow. How could life possibly go on if my team (and they were my team) got busted up? They just had to win tonight.
Pippen nailed a three in Russell’s face to put the Blazers up by one with twelve seconds left. Then Russell, who had been money all night, promptly missed two free throws. Pippen rebounded the ball, got fouled and made one free throw.
This was it. Down by two with a second and a half left, Russell inbounded to Malone, got the ball back, and missed a three at the buzzer. Game over. Hornacek’s career—over. Life—over.
After a few minutes, my little sister poked her head in the bedroom door. “Are you crying?” she asked. “Jeez, it’s just a stupid basketball game.”
I was indeed crying over a stupid basketball game, and I cried myself to sleep that night. Even then, I knew it was perfectly ridiculous, but I couldn’t help it.
Over the next couple seasons, they did indeed break up my team, and by the end of the 2002-03 season, head coach Jerry Sloan was the only holdover from the glory years of the late ’90s. Over the next several years, my NBA loyalties never wavered, but it never felt the same. The Jazz saw some decent success, most notably in 2007, when Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer led them to the conference finals. But they didn’t feel like my guys, not like they used to.
That changed in 2012, when a young, inexperienced Jazz team won its final five games of the regular season to sneak into the playoffs. They were led by Al Jefferson, a low-post scorer whose slow feet didn’t stop him from looking downright balletic at times. It was an eminently likable team, and for the first time in a decade, I found myself really, truly caring about the Jazz’s success. Of course, they were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the mighty San Antonio Spurs, but that mattered very little. Once again, we had a team worthy of being called our guys.
You know, there’s a funny thing about the ag business: Technically speaking, every grower, every shipper, is competing in the market against every other grower and shipper. But it rarely feels that way. There may be minor disagreements among neighbors about spray drift or fences in need of repair. There may be knock-down, drag-out arguments about the best approaches to legislative and regulatory issues. But in the end, you never really feel like that grower across the valley is playing for the other team; he’s one of your guys.
There’s no joy in seeing a neighbor’s field wilted by late blight or a fire at the next packing shed down the tracks. Those guys are your guys, and that doesn’t change year to year. A win for one grower is generally a win for all; the same goes for a loss. Year after year, ag folk prove that they deserve each other’s trust, love and support, and year after year they get it.
Yep, these are my guys.