In the early days of the Rocky Mountain Review, the NBA was not directly involved with the leagues as they are now but they wanted to promote the summer league concept to push for more commercial involvement of the teams with their cities. In 1984 there were 18 summer leagues!!! But The Utah Jazz had Dave Checketts, then VP of Business Operations for the Jazz. He sent out letters to 60 current and previous college and NBA players living in and around the greater Salt Lake area as the basis for their summer league. From that first list enough players were recruited for 7 teams:
Gus Paulos Chevrolet (players from 7 different colleges)
Watts Lumber (Danny Ainge's first summer team)
Domino's Pizza (a Jazz team with Mark Eaton, Bobbie Hansen, Dave Checketts, Scott Layden and several Jazz rookies)
Pepsi (mostly ex-BYU players including Fred Roberts and Greg Kite)
Zales Jewelry/Seiko (mostly ex-Weber State players)
Silo-Associated Business (ex-Univ of Utah players including Tom Chambers, Danny Vranes and Pace Manion)
Salt Lake Donut (many ex-Southern Utah Univ players)
Games were played in 1000 seat Westminster College. Typical scores were 122-95, 131-119 as defense was not a major part of summer league then. Scores up into the 140's and 150's were not unusual. Later that first season Bobby Hanson, playing for Domino's Pizza, scored 79 points in a losing effort. A record that stands to this day.
And so started what became the Grandaddy of Summer Leagues until the fateful Vegas Summer League got going full tilt in 2006 and in 2008 drew 21 NBA teams.
Some time during TDOS I'll try to publish the full story done for the Kings way back in 1997 complete with interviews (Point-a-minute Funderburke) and more photos.
Anybody out there remember back in those days??
