I was reading through a chat with John Hollinger of ESPN.com and came across the following question and answer:
Lance (KC): Who will have the most feared home crowd in the playoffs? Golden State? Utah?
John Hollinger: Probably Utah, because they're not only very loud but also almost completely irrational. Golden State's up there, so are Boston and Detroit. Along those lines, it was nice to see Houston have some actual crowd noise for a change during this win streak. Let's hope they keep it up in the playoffs.
Apparently we are "almost completely irrational". I kind of took this as a compliment being a the charter member and president of the Dillusionaly Optomistic Fan Club. I want our fans to be irrational, loud, obnoxious and generally a pain in the ass for the opposing team and refs. It makes me proud to see us get under the skin of someone like Kobe Bryant to the point that he loses control of his emotions and looks like a complete tool on national T.V. (Note to Jazz fans though: Kobe, like D-Will, seems to play a little better when he is pissed off, lets trying showering him with compliments next time we see him.) So I keep reading Hollingers chat hoping for a follow up question to get the reasoning of his claim and came across this Q&A:
Brad: Utah's crowd isn't irrational. They are passionate.
John Hollinger: I half-agree with you. They are definitely passionate. But between the screaming bloody murder after obvious fouls, the booing Fisher (what?), etc., they're definitely a little unhinged too.
I am now giggling like a mad scientist who just finished some new torture device. Now we are unhinged on top of irrational and passionate. I hope that every team in the NBA feels this way about our fans. You want the other players to have us, the fan, in the back of their minds wondering where the next beer is going to come flying in from, (I don't condone throwing object onto the court unless you are aiming a player who has raped someone in Colorado) or complaining to the refs because we are swaying them to make a few calls go our way. This is how the fan can help the home team win and the Utah Jazz fans are the best at doing it.
Keep up the good work Jazz Fans, our efforts account for about 1.3% of the team wins this year. The Jazz should win tonights game by 15 so there is not much to write about there. Final score prediction against the Bobcats: 112 - 95.