On April 6, 1979, the New Orleans Jazz capped off another losing season with a 140-131 defeat at home to the Milwaukee Bucks. The loss was no surprise. The Jazz had not had a winning season in any of the team’s five years of existence. That season, their final record would be 26-56—the worst among the NBA’s 22 teams.
The shocker came a week later.
That’s when news leaked that owners Sam Battistone and Larry Hatfield were looking to move the team out of Louisiana.
Frank Layden, then an assistant coach with the Atlanta Hawks and Tom Nissalke, who had just been named the NBA’s coach of the year with the Houston Rockets, found themselves in contract negotiations without knowing where the team was headed.