The Utah Jazz play today (April Fool's Day) against the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Wolves are a young team with a number of talented, exciting, good players. And the Jazz would be fools to overlook them. In fact, if you look at the history books the Utah Jazz haven't always taken care of business on April Fool's day. Over the last 30 years the team has had a game on April 1st a grand total of fifteen different times. Utah has gone 9 and 6 over this span, and for some strange reason only four of the games have been close at all. Really, 10 of the 15 games on April Fool's day finish with a double digit margin, and there have been several blowouts. Sadly, not always in our favor.
Year | Game | UTA | OPP | +/- | Year | Game | UTA | OPP | +/- | |||||||||
1 | 1987 | @ | San Antonio Spurs | 107 | - | 104 | Win | 3 | 16 | 2002 | ||||||||
2 | 1988 | 17 | 2003 | @ | Los Angeles Clippers | 94 | - | 89 | Win | 5 | ||||||||
3 | 1989 | @ | Sacramento Kings | 97 | - | 117 | Loss | -20 | 18 | 2004 | ||||||||
4 | 1990 | @ | Los Angeles Lakers | 103 | - | 119 | Loss | -16 | 19 | 2005 | vs | Golden State Warriors | 91 | - | 108 | Loss | -17 | |
5 | 1991 | 20 | 2006 | @ | Portland Trail Blazers | 102 | - | 89 | Win | 13 | ||||||||
6 | 1992 | 21 | 2007 | @ | Houston Rockets | 86 | - | 83 | Win | 3 | ||||||||
7 | 1993 | 22 | 2008 | |||||||||||||||
8 | 1994 | 23 | 2009 | |||||||||||||||
9 | 1995 | @ | Los Angeles Clippers | 98 | - | 116 | Loss | -18 | 24 | 2010 | ||||||||
10 | 1996 | 25 | 2011 | vs | Los Angeles Lakers | 85 | - | 96 | Loss | -11 | ||||||||
11 | 1997 | 26 | 2012 | |||||||||||||||
12 | 1998 | vs | Portland Trail Blazers | 98 | - | 89 | Win | 9 | 27 | 2013 | vs | Portland Trail Blazers | 112 | - | 102 | Win | 10 | |
13 | 1999 | vs | Houston Rockets | 88 | - | 87 | Win | 1 | 28 | 2014 | ||||||||
14 | 2000 | @ | Denver Nuggets | 92 | - | 112 | Loss | -20 | 29 | 2015 | vs | Denver Nuggets | 98 | - | 84 | Win | 14 | |
15 | 2001 | @ | Vancouver Grizzlies | 92 | - | 73 | Win | 19 | 30 | 2016 | vs | Minnesota Timberwolves |
Five times, one out of ever three April Fool's day games, the Jazz have ended up losing by 16 points, or worse. That's not a trend I want to see continue, especially since the Jazz are over due for a beat down if we go by the "once every three games" rule.
I can only hope that Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors (if he is back) and company figure out that it's too late in the season to be losing games.