Goodbye Jazz

(The following post may upset my co-editor, but that hasn't stopped me before for posting. Just a warning.)

I can't say when it happened exactly, but I don't love the Jazz anymore. I really mean the NBA as a whole, but the Jazz are the only team I really ever cared about. This is not a break-up, it's more like a therapeutic come-to-Jesus session.
The Jazz are like Dave Matthews Band for me. (Hold on, this will make sense.) During junior high and high school Dave Matthews could do no wrong. From Under the Table and Dreaming to Before These Crowded Streets, DMB consumed my musical life. I would never go more than a few days without listening to one of their CDs. Yet, somewhere along the road I lost interest. Their music simply did not resonate. It wasn't bad, it just didn't stick. I'm not just talking about their new stuff, I'm talking about everything. Their only value in my life became exclusively nostalgic.
During my formative years (not that I'm completely formed or anything) the Jazz held most of my time, my passion and my brain power. The day after every game I'd pour over newspaper box scores and articles, always wanting more. My happiest moments, and my saddest moments during that time can be traced to the Jazz. The most sublime moment of my life, before graduation, was easily Stockton's shot (if you don't know what I'm talking about, here it is). My saddest moment was Jordan's superhuman performance to seal the Jazz's title hopes in 1998.
If I were to lose any of that obsession, Stockton retiring and Malone defecting would've been the most logical time to do it. Yet it didn't happen.
About this time, I got married. My wife, although warned, did not expect the frightening display of me watching a Jazz game. She couldn't understand the need to yell at the screen (there was a lot of this during these Carlos Arroyo days), let alone clap and scream at it. I'm pretty sure she thought she had married a sociopath.
Three years of lottery appearances, baffling personnel moves and sub-.500 ball would have also been an understandable time to lose interest. Yet, it didn't happen. My obsession thrived, in fact.
Then Deron Williams came. And Mehmet Okur, Carlos Boozer (occasionally), Ronnie Brewer, Paul Millsap, among others, filled the lineup. During this time of thriving optimism for the team, my passion should have been overflowing. It wasn't. It began to fade. In spite of every game being televised, I missed about every other one. Game nights just didn't hold the same anticipatory excitement. So began the decline until this year.
Not only were the Jazz not a priority for me this season, they were barely on my radar. I still kept up with the ups and downs, of which there were plenty of both; but, overall I just didn't care. I watched only three full regular season games this year and one and a half playoff games.
You may say that this is simply a response to their disappointing regular season and unceremonious exit from the playoffs. You may call me fair weather. You would be wrong on both accounts. I can't say why the passion is gone, it just is. I've stuck through much worse situations with this team before, without losing any of the passion. This has nothing to do with the performance of the team, or the likability of its players. It just is.
Now, I haven't written the Jazz out of my life. Just like I haven't written the Dave Matthews Band off. A brilliant album could easily bring me back into the fold. Anything's possible. A brilliant team or player (along with Deron Williams, of course) could relight my interest and passion. But now it's burning pretty low.