NBA: A Season Begins : Prospect of a Title Wave in the Land of the Salt Lake : If Jazz Were Champion, Folks in Utah Would Just Raise a Little Heck

The date: June 20, 1989.

The site: The Salt Palace, Salt Lake City

The scene: Mark Eaton, the 7-foot 4-inch center of the Utah Jazz, nudges the toes of his sneakers up to the foul line. The heels of his sneakers rest on the half-court stripe. He makes the free throw and the Jazz wins the National Basketball Assn. championship.

In an instant, Salt Lake City erupts in wild and raucous celebration, a mad explosion of giddiness unrivaled in Utah since that unforgettable bumper wheat crop of 1965. That festive occasion nearly 25 years ago tore through the state with such joyous force that dozens of crazed farmers were rumored to have stayed up long past supper.

Outside the Salt Palace in the CBS trucks, directors and producers are brought back to life with electric-shock heart paddles, having barely survived 7 days of national TV ratings that bottomed out on the Nielsen chart somewhere between a particularly bad “My Favorite Martian” rerun in 1967 and all of the Geraldo Rivera specials.

The Utah Jazz. NBA champions. Let the celebration begin!

In the Jazz locker room, a dozen paint-shaking machines are brought in from the hardware store in a desperate attempt to stir up carbonation in the quart bottles of cream soda bought and trucked in by the state’s first family, the Osmonds.

Marie, being interviewed by Brent Musburger amid the pandemonium, loses all control and blurts out on national television, “Well, I’ll be a son of a gun.”

Karl Malone, the muscular Jazz forward, is the first to romp through the doors, his ears still ringing from the deafening chant that started as the final buzzer sounded, a chant that boomed from the throats of 12,000 Jazz fans and a chant Malone will never forget: “That was very nice, Karl. Gosh, we are happy now.”

In the locker room of the Boston Celtics, sad faces quickly give way to bright eyes and smirks. Yes, the sad faces of the Celtics said plainly, “In this season we are losers.” But the now-smirking faces say just as plainly, “We’re on flight 326 that leaves tonight. “

Outside, the city is bursting. In 1847, Brigham Young stumbled upon this very spot and proclaimed, “This is the place.”

In the years since, some 35 million people have viewed the same area and proclaimed, “I don’t think so,” continuing westward, most of them finding apartments in Los Angeles.

But on this night, the world belongs to Salt Lake City.

From the towns of Vernal and Bluebell in the east, from Ibapah in the west and Shivwits and Virgin in the south, all of Utah begins to dance poorly to the thumping strains of the Osmonds’ hit single, “One Bad Apple.”

And with great emotion they chant the state motto: “Utah. Gateway to Nevada.”

One Utah resident not celebrating the championship is Marv Dumer. He is serving a 90-day jail sentence for trying to sell counterfeit tickets to the NBA finals. He claims he received permission to print the tickets from NBA Commissioner David Stern, who he says he picked up hitchhiking in the Nevada desert “a long time ago.”

City officials make plans for a victory parade down the main street of Salt Lake City. They debate the route and finally settle on Main Street. Plans call for the players to ride on Eaton in lieu of a float. Malone will serve as a police barricade and Darrell Griffith will be a featured attraction, jumping over telephone poles along the parade route.

The procession will begin at Snelgrove’s Ice Cream Parlor on the corner of Main and 10th streets, proceed north past Snelgrove’s Ice Cream Parlor on Main and 8th, continue north past Snelgrove’s Ice Cream Parlor on Main and 5th and arrive at the 48-million square-foot Mormon Temple, right across the street from Snelgrove’s Ice Cream Parlor.

Heading the parade will be a group of 500 young men who alternately sing, drink diet soda and eat hard, red fruit. It is the Mormon Tab and Apple Choir. As the choir leads the gathering into Temple Square, officials release 10,000 sea gulls, the honest-to-goodness official state bird of Utah. The birds streak for the dome of the capitol and perch there, eyeing the crowd below and waiting to swoop down on their trash.

After a dozen speeches and a rousing music session by a jazz band that was brought in from New Orleans because there are no jazz musicians in Utah, the celebration is over. The players bolt for a line of taxicabs and are whisked away to the airport so they can fly home. The crowd, which has somehow managed to stay awake for 2 days despite the ban on caffeine, disperses.

One of the last to leave is Seth Miller. Slowly, he picks up his family’s blankets and souvenirs and packs them away in the station wagon. And with a final gaze across Temple Square in Salt Lake City, now a proud city of champions, Miller holds the car door open for his children. His wives will ride in the van.