Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Coming soon: Sunday Jazz home games.
The Jazz announced its full 2023-24 schedule Thursday and, notably, have three home games that will be played on Sundays. The franchise has long requested to not host Sunday games for, um, let's call them cultural reasons. The late-Larry H. Miller, the former Jazz owner, even famously skipped playoff games the Jazz hosted on Sundays.
However, this season, the league mandated each team to select four potential dates to host Sunday games. The Jazz ultimately will host three such contests as follows:
- Nov. 19: Phoenix Suns
- Feb. 4: Milwaukee Bucks
- Feb. 25: San Antonio Spurs.
Here are some other notable things about this season's schedule.
The opener
The Jazz will open the season at home on Oct. 25 against the Sacramento Kings. It will mark the first time the Jazz play a regular-season game in a building called the Delta Center since April 19, 2006, when Utah beat Golden State in the regular season finale.
Here's the full schedule: pic.twitter.com/9ywb03bKaF
— Ryan Miller (@millerjryan) August 17, 2023
The In-Season Tournament
The new gimmicky, but probably entertaining In-season Tournament will tipoff in November. The Jazz are in the West Group A, along with Memphis, Portland, Phoenix and the Los Angeles Lakers.
- Nov. 10: at Memphis Grizzlies, 6 p.m. MT
- Nov. 14: vs. Portland Trail Blazers, 7 p.m. MT
- Nov. 17: vs. Phoenix Suns (ESPN), 8 p.m. MT
- Nov. 21: @ Los Angeles Lakers (TNT), 8 p.m. MT
If the Jazz advance from their group or get the wildcard spot (awarded to the Western Conference team with the next best record in group play outside of the winners), they'll move into an eight-team knockout round. The quarterfinal games will be on Dec. 4 or 5 at home sites. The semifinals (Dec. 7) and the final (Dec. 9) will be in Las Vegas.
National TV games
Did you notice how the Jazz will have two national TV games during the In-Season Tournament? Well, don't get used to that. Those are the only two Jazz games currently scheduled to be on ESPN or TNT. Utah will play seven times on NBA TV.
So is it a hard schedule?
According to the website Positive Residual, yes, it is — at least based on a couple metrics.
The Jazz have the second easiest strength of schedule and is tied for the fewest back-to-back games at 13.
Return of Quin Snyder
Someting will happen that's only occured once (and just barely) in the last 40 years. The Jazz will face a former head coach when they travel to Atlanta to play Quin Snyder's Hawks on Feb. 27. Snyder will make his return to Utah on March 15.
Snyder was the Jazz head coach for eight seasons, leading the team to the playoffs in each of his final six seasons with the team. Overall, Snyder had a 372-264 record in Utah, and won three playoff series.
There's not a lot of Utah history against former coaches. Utah played Tom Nissalke during the 1982-83 season, a season after he was fired by the Jazz.
Frank Layden, Nissalke's replacement, never coached again after stepping down from his lead position on the Jazz bench, and neither did Jerry Sloan.
Utah did play Ty Corbin when he served as interim coach for the Kings in in February of 2015. And that just barely happened. A few days after Corbin's Kings lost to the Jazz, he was relived of his coaching duties in Sacramento.
Other homecomings
Mike Conley served as the mouthpiece of the team as last season's team welcomed back numerous old friends. He spoke glowingly about his time with Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert and Royce O'Neale leading up to those games, and even took time while injured to answer some questions about Bojan Bogdanovic.
This season, he'll get his own homecoming game — or two.
The Jazz will welcome back Conley's (and Gobert's) Minnesota Timberwolves for a two-game series on March 16 and 18.
Conley played over three seasons in Utah, earning an All-Star nod in 2021.
Other notable homecomings include:
- Donovan Mitchell (along with George Niang) will make his second trip back to Utah on April 2
- Joe Ingles will return with the Orlando Magic on Nov. 2
- Bojan Bogdanovic and the Detroit Pistons will be in Salt Lake City on Jan. 3
- Gordon Hayward (who, yes, is still getting some boos) and the Hornets will visit Utah on Feb. 22.
