Former Utah Jazz great Thurl Bailey says this year’s team will have championship conversations with the additions it made this offseason.

He has been living in Utah for the better part of 30 years and he says this was the most exciting summer in terms of team building since he has been involved with the team.

“I mean back in the day you were trying to sell Utah to players,” Bailey said. “And if you were lucky you’d get guys like (Karl) Malone and (John) Stockton who just wanted to play basketball.”

He says it is impressive considering the market that the Jazz have seen this success.

“You should start to hear this season the word championship being used more,” Bailey said. “Ultimately that is what every team wants, but realistically teams know that they’re not even close. The Jazz on paper are close, perhaps closer than most teams in the league.”

He says that obviously doesn’t guarantee a championship, but what the Jazz front office has built gives them a puncher’s chance. He specifically singles out the team’s ability to prevent the opponent from scoring with Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert.

“You got to be able to defend,” Bailey said. “And with the best defender in the world in the house, Jazz chances shoot up dramatically.”

The Utah Jazz just had its Media Day Monday and are preparing for a new season when it hosts the Adelaide 36ers from Australia on Saturday. Tip off is at 7 PM.

Thurl Bailey’s Playing Days

The former power forward was part of the 1983-1984 team which helped to deliver the franchise’s first playoff appearance and started a streak of 20 straight postseason appearances.

Bailey was taken 7th in the first round of the 1983 Draft. He says he believes he wasn’t taken just for talent because he believes there were better players on the board.

“I may have had the best all around package as far as someone they did their research on,” Bailey said. “They knew what kind of person I was and they knew, maybe, the things I did in the community along with having really good basketball skills. The right team drafted me, let’s put it that way.”

He played several seasons with Stockton and Malone, calling them arguably the best duo in NBA history to never win a championship.

Who was the player he had the hardest time guarding? The former Celtic great in the 1980’s and early 90’s.

“I had nightmares, I had fits guarding Larry Bird,” Bailey said. “Well you say ‘This guy couldn’t jump high, he couldn’t run fast, he was just from a podunk town in Indiana’, but he was like a basketball savant almost.

“He knew where to be, he knew how to get his shot off, he knew what to do at what time in the game. You look at the stat sheet at the end of the game and you thought you did a pretty good job, he’d have 50.”

Bailey says at that point you could only be proud of yourself that Bird didn’t get 55.

He played with the Jazz from 1983-1991 before being traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Ty Corbin. He eventually moved to Europe and competed in a Greek league and then an Italian league. He finished is playing career with the Utah Jazz in the 1998-1999 season.