It’s back to purple and white and away from black and yellow for the Utah Jazz.
Two seasons after re-branding, the franchise has decided to shift back to its roots, unveiling new jerseys for the 2024-25 season that lean on its history.
Purple, white and a sky blue, along with a mountain decal, will be featured throughout the uniforms, all of which are nods to Utah basketball teams of the past.
The purple and white mountain combo is synonymous with the Jazz because of John Stockton and Karl Malone, and the success they brought with back-to-back Finals appearances in 1997 and ’98.
Ryan Smith, Jazz governor and now co-owner of Utah’s NHL franchise, recognized how connected the local market was to that era and those colours.
“We know the purple pops,” Smith told ESPN. “It’s how a lot of people know us … making this our own has been what we’ve been working on.”
Meanwhile, sky blue is a callback to the Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer-era jerseys the team wore for six years starting in 2004.
“You walk outside right now and you see that blue on the mountains with the white,” Smith said. “It’s pretty similar to who we are and what you see.”
With Smith’s NBA squad going through an “evolution” as he put it, and his upcoming NHL team presumably mulling over ideas for their uniforms, it begs the question if he’s considered any design crossover between the franchises.
The answer seems to be yes.
“In a dream scenario, there’s a Venn diagram where you’ve got the Jazz and this team … where things could kind of overlap,” said Smith on the 32 Thoughts podcast with Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek in April.
“If you look at the mountains on the (Jazz) jersey, I think that kind of breeds a little bit of a colour palette naturally, of fresh ice, the whole setup, blue skies, you see that.”
He added that ideally, both teams should have their own unique elements but a sense of “symmetry” appealed to him.
Above all else, however, Smith says the Utah hockey team’s mission is to create something the city can feel invested in and relate with.
“The goal is we want it to be by Utah, for Utah,” he said.
And if we’re going off that, nothing personifies Salt Lake City quite like the landscape.
“The one thing that is absolutely part of who we are is these mountains that sit within 15 miles of no matter where you live,” Smith said to ESPN when talking about the Jazz’ decision to re-incorporate mountains in their new jerseys.
So that may not guarantee anything in terms of design prompts for the Utah hockey team, but at the very least we know it’s something they’ll consider.