Ryan Smith Joined Hans & Scotty G. Talking About Jazz, Utah Hockey, BYU Basketball

Ryan Smith Joined Hans & Scotty G. Talking About Jazz, Utah Hockey, BYU Basketball

the Utah Sports scene has never been hotter and at the center of it all is scg and Ryan Smith he joined Hansen Scotty on 975 the KSL Sports Zone on Friday afternoon for a 40-minute conversation everything from the Jazz to NHL hockey to BYU Hoops you can listen to the entire interview on KSL sports.com let’s begin with the Utah Jazz a team desperate to improve desperate to be relevant again in the NBA they have several different ways to improve free agency draft assets the drafted self so which Avenue will the Jazz take to improve their Fortune maybe all of them will they speed up the rebuild or continue the Slow Burn well Ryan made it clear that he will support Danny a in his plans and not get in the way and get involved in Personnel decisions you know you you really don’t bring Danny a in and not let Danny a do Danny a things so I’m involved in all of the details around the team but when it comes to basketball personnel and how we do it I mean I have mind desire you know I’m a competitive guy I want to win and I want to win now and want to win always and want to you know have that goal for our franchise to be able to do something we haven’t done which is win a championship it’s really really important to me and I’m going to be doing this for 30 years this is the game we live and breathe this is where High Hopes meet Great Heights this is Mountain basketball and we wear it proudly I don’t know Mountain basketball looks pretty darn good I like the black one I like the white one they look pretty sharp I do too you know two years ago we received this press release from the Utah Jazz with the big bold headline purple is back then they unveiled black yellow uniform scheme that uh just one city edition purple uniform throw them the garbage okay that Rebrand went over pretty poorly at least in my opinion but this week purple really is back for the Utah Jazz yeah on Wednesday the Jazz unveiled this purple white and black combo that includes both the Mountain theme as well as the classic J note these uniforms will be put to use already this upcoming season however there will be a bit of a transition the Jazz will still wear the white and black uniforms from last season and then those black and yellows will go away by the end of the year the New Year they’ll give away for those new black uniforms with the J note and the mountain backdrop and then of course next season there’s going to be a new city addition added to the white and purple and black uniforms as well jazer Ryan Smith joined hen Scotty on the KSL Sports Zone he said getting this Rebrand done hasn’t been all that easy the Jazz Brand’s definitely a trickier one than probably many in the NBA you know if you look at Boston or Chicago or San Antonio these are very different than coming from New Orleans having a name the Jazz I I’ll never forget my first preseason games one of the GMS from the Pelicans came up and said hey can we can we have that name back I was like um I didn’t know what to say try to find something that we authentically own in Utah Mountain basketball is just it it’s what we are there’s there’s Beach basketball you go to La Miami like we authentically can own Mountain basketball I think it’s a box that we can color in for a long long time and we’re excited about that the purple is something that’s tricky but you know it’s what a lot of people want they know with as and the purple in the mountains makes it better I think the blue coming back also provides a lot of nostalgia for a lot of people in that D will Boozer era so I thought the team did an incredibly good job at rolling that out and you know kind of touched all the different Pockets or genres of our fan base because they aren’t just one fan base they’re very different genres of folks when they think of the Jazz the excitement surrounding BYU basketball right now and the moves that have been made have been possible in part to the contributions from BYU Alum Ryan Smith he was asked about that during his appearance on Hansen Scotty Friday he challenged alumni of other schools in the state to do the same thing he’s doing yeah and I think there’s a lot of questions on how involved I get I mean also I think there’s probably a lot of misconceptions around you know why I’m involved you know as I as I kind of go through my childhood you know I grew up kind of roaming those Halls of BYU and being there and and The more I’ve gotten old older The more I’ve realized that his life happened you know my parents split up I think my dad took a year off to kind of be with us kids because we were at a different phase of life and it very critical one and and BYU kind of supported him through that and you know you fast forward you know 10 years after that and my dad gets stage four throat cancer and BYU supports them all the way through that include kind of working from home resting keeping everything there and you know we end up starting qual tricks together so me supporting BYU is very very um not about sports it’s about you know they supported my family when we were going through our craziest times like probably no employer I’ve ever seen and it would be really weird for me to be in the spot I’m in and not support them of sports topics in town these days what will the name be for Utah’s NHL team we want to know the list was narrowed from the 20 nominees down to six which fans can now vote on yeah Ryan Smith he was aggressive in his pursuit of an NHL Franchise and now that it’s here Smith entertainment is moving forward with the challenge of getting this brand done and done right he talked about it on Friday with h and Scotty on the ks Sports Zone look I’ve done some gnarly stuff in my career professionally and like this is about as aggressive and crazy as anything that has come across my plate and I think you mentioned Chris and Jim and the team they’re just doing a herculan effort right now is everyone coming together and saying hey what can we do we know these opportunities don’t come along I know there’s three other cities right now who are begging for a hockey team and these are big cities these are basketball markets and they chose Utah and so the answer is you just all join together as a community and you just try to get it done in the best you can knowing that it’s not going to be perfect we don’t want it to be perfect we actually want it to be authentic and we’re we’re building a community around hockey you know you don’t get to start a brand from scratch very often this is a Community Asset and if you think about the prior conversation about people coming in and wanting to be a part of it they’re voting on it it’s not about Ryan Smith or my family our ownership group as much as it truly is about the community and so we want the community to be able to take part in naming it you know we’re not going to run design by 500,000 people cuz that would be a disaster but like I think it’s really working as far as the Outreach and getting people invested and wanting to provide ideas and you know we’ve come up with six names and it’s amazing you know there are still some doubters in the NHL World those who don’t think Utah Ryan Smith are capable of pulling this off so quickly including some in the NHL media in his Stanley Cup finals media availability yesterday commissioner Gary bman was asked about the ticket sales that just began for an arena with several thousand obstructed view seats bman quickly informed the reporter that within 2 years the seating situation it would be fixed and that the progress here in Utah is going better than they expected initial ticket sales which I think is 24 hours old have been to say the least extraordinarily robust uh and we’re excited about everything that Ryan and his organization are doing to welcome the players and welcome NHL hockey and into introduce it into Utah uh I think things are going even better than we could have hoped based on the short time frame that they’ve had to work with because they’ve literally since the announcement which hasn’t been that long ago and as you all know this didn’t come about over a long period of time they’re literally drinking from a fire hose and they’re doing it unbelievably well

Utah NHL owner Ryan Smith joined KSL Sports Zone‘s Hans & Scotty G. to discuss the franchise’s nickname, branding, and more.

On Friday, June 7, the league’s newest owner told Hans Olsen and Scott Garrard that the process of acquiring a franchise and getting it ready for the season was “about as aggressive and crazy as anything” he’s done in his storied career.