Gold Standard? A Brief History of Utah’s Statement Uniforms

On Saturday night, when the Utah Jazz left the floor at Chase Center, they went to the locker room and removed their controversial Statement Edition uniforms for the last time after a regular season game. It remains to be seen if they will don the gold in the postseason, but they’ve only been used once in the last 23 playoff games over the past three years, so don’t count on it. Whether you want to celebrate their place in Jazz history or their departure, let’s take this moment to remember the key moments in these controversial threads’ life cycle.

September 15, 2017

The Jazz sent guard Rodney Hood, the player the team was pitching as the face of the franchise following Gordon Hayward’s July 4 departure, to Culver City, California, for Nike’s official Statement Edition reveal. On cue and in concert with 29 other NBA players, Hood removed his black warmup to reveal a primarily gold getup with navy and green trim, and the Statement era kicked off.

“I really like the look of these gold jerseys,” Hood shared in a release on the team’s website. “Our fans are going to be impressed when they see these in person,” he added, proving that whether we’re talking about shots or takes, he wasn’t always accurate. From the earliest days, fans compared the jerseys to all sorts of questionable substances, from mustard to urine to baby poop.

November 25, 2017

The Jazz debuted the new kits at home against the Milwaukee Bucks. Former Jazzman Derrick Favors scored the first points in gold just 13 seconds into the game, thanks to a steal and assist by another former Jazzman, Joe Ingles. The Jazz won the first three consecutive games in the Statement set, against the Bucks and Nuggets, and at the Clippers.

December 7, 2017

The gold beauties (or atrocities, depending on your preferences) took their first loss in a home game against the Houston Rockets, and then again 11 days later in Houston. The Jazz were swept by the Rockets that season, so it probably didn’t matter much what they wore, but just keep these two games in mind when we get to the playoffs.

February 2, 2018

This was my first chance to see the Statement ensemble and have my retinas burned in person, at a road win in Phoenix.

I have two confessions: First, I don’t hate the gold jerseys. If you feel like I’m being snarky and taking shots at them, I’m really just playing to the crowd. Second, while I’ve never hated the gold gear, I’ve also never loved it on the court against opponents in white, not because I can’t tell the difference, but because the lack of a darker color makes everything look a little washed out.¹

April 27, 2018

The Jazz had already worn gold once in the first round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder, winning Game 2 in OKC, but this was the date of the closeout Game 6. With the Vivint crowd decked out in color-coordinated shirts, the Jazz won a hard-fought game to advance to the second round and send the Thunder to the offseason.

If you had polled the players and fans the next day, I’d imagine that everyone thought of these uniforms pretty positively, but that was about to change.

April 29, 2018 and May 6, 2018

The Jazz appeared in yellow twice in the second round against the Houston Rockets: game one in Houston and game four in Utah. Consistent with the regular season efforts against the Rockets, they lost both games².

The team finished 15-6 in the Statement uniforms in the regular season and 2-2 in the playoffs.

September 24, 2018

Lack of success against the Rockets notwithstanding, the Jazz entered 2018-19 featuring the gold jerseys. On the team’s media day, players in Statement Edition uniforms were filmed doing a variety of actions (dropping the mic, looking tough while wearing sunglasses, and drinking coffee) that were used during games throughout the season, and that still circulate as GIFs on social media.

JOEEEEEE3EEEEEEE3EEEEE pic.twitter.com/6KHbM0Jyfw

— Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) October 29, 2018

These occasionally maligned threads didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

November 17, 2018

For the 2018-19 season, the Jazz added two additional uniforms to the repertoire: the purple J-note throwback and the original dark green Earned Edition that was a repaint of the original Statement uniform. As a result, only 15 nights were scheduled for gold all season long.

The Jazz lost the first three 2018-19 outings in yellow, but beat the Celtics in TD Garden in a date that was added to the Statement schedule. This was also the second time I saw these jerseys live, and I have to say, they looked so much better contrasted with Boston’s black uniforms than they had with Phoenix’s white kits.

If you know where to look, you can find Dan Clayton and me in the crowd (behind the fist-pumping Celtics fan at 0:38, or celebrating a Dante Exum three behind the basket at 0:54).

This was also the first time the Jazz faced opponent Gordon Hayward, who was seldom seen and never mentioned in the game highlights video above. Let’s rectify that with one more highlight that places Hayward front-and-center in one of my most memorable mustard moments ever³.

January 1, 2019

By the time 2019 rolled around, the Jazz were only 2-7 when wearing gold, and attitudes had changed. To celebrate New Year’s Day, the team flexed out of Statements and into the Classic unis for a loss Toronto, then did the same thing four days later as they celebrated Dan Clayton’s birthday with a win in Detroit.

They later wore gold on three more occasions, satisfying what I believe to be the minimum requirement of 12 games, then nixed the final two planned appearances. The Jazz ended with a final record of 4-8 while wearing yellow, never wearing them again after February 22, including the playoffs.

November to December 2019

The Statement Edition was trotted out early and often to start the 2019-20 season, with the team wearing gold seven times in the first 21 games, primarily on the road. After a loss in Sacramento during the the first appearance, the Jazz next used yellow in a home win against the Sixers.

That was the end of the good news, as the Jazz wouldn’t win in yellow again that season.

After five more losses (a 1-6 record), the jerseys made the non grata list for both fans and players, as if the jerseys were missing the shots, defending poorly, and otherwise causing the team to suck, but only on the nights when they wore the Statement Edition. The team flexed out of yellow and into anything else they could for the next four scheduled nights, which would have left them with the minimum of 12 golden games. Unable to flex any more, the team wore gold on February 21, 2020, more than two months since they had last done so, when they lost to the Spurs at home.

March 11, 2020

This date has nothing to do with Statement Edition jerseys, but it would enable the team to put them on mothballs for the rest of the season. The Jazz took to the floor in Oklahoma City wearing their Classic Edition purple mountain throwbacks, but the game never tipped off. You know the story well. Right before tipoff, word came that Rudy Gobert had tested positive for Covid-19. The game was postponed, the season was halted, and when it finally resumed, the remaining games took place in the NBA bubble in Orlando, Florida.

According to the original schedule, the Jazz would have worn gold four more times, but with the entire schedule revamped, they were off the hook. In the end, the club didn’t even take that set of uniforms to Florida. The Statement jerseys retired early that season with a 1-7 record, and one wondered if we’d ever see them again.

April 28, 2021

In the first post-bubble season, the NBA released half of an NBA schedule, anticipating that eventually each team would play 72 games. The Jazz planned to play six games in mustard uniforms in the first half, then later only added three more appearances when the second half of the truncated season was announced. The gold getups would only see the court nine times in 2020-21, six times in Salt Lake and three times on the road.

Crazily enough, the team flipped the script, winning all nine matchups in mustard.

The Jazz, on their way to a league-leading 52-20 record, won many games handily, and those played in the yellow uniforms were no exception. I’m not sure there was a key win out of those nine games. The club faced Gordon Hayward⁴ and the Charlotte Hornets twice, the first of which was a particularly attractive teal vs. yellow matchup. A midseason meeting with Memphis was also aesthetically pleasing, with the Grizz in black and gold (albeit a very different version of the color).

But if you want to watch some electric highlights from the team’s best recent regular season, there’s no better choice than the night the Jazz wore gold in the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, torching the Kings by 49 points, 154-105.

June 14, 2021

The Jazz had defeated the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the playoffs while wearing Dark Mode kits at home and white Association unis on the road, and planned to follow the same pattern in the second round against the L.A. Clippers.

Round✌️. Here’s the @UtahJazz uniform schedule for the series against #ClipperNation:

More #DarkMode🌋 & white lined up. #TakeNote pic.twitter.com/9twpzQOJ1n

— Jazz Uniform Tracker (@JazzUniTracker) June 7, 2021

After winning the first two games at home and losing Game 3 in Staples Center, the team called an audible, rolling out the golden threads that were undefeated in the regular season, hoping to apply a…