The Utah Prospectors were a One-Year Wonder in the minor league Western Basketball Association that played at the Salt Palace during the winter of 1978-79. The team was sometimes abbreviated simply as the “Pros”. The Pros were displaced when the NBA’s New Orleans Jazz moved to Salt Lake City to become the Utah Jazz in the spring of 1979.
The Salt Lake Golden Eagles hockey team was a popular mainstay on the Utah pro sports scene for a quarter century. That Eagles endured despite the shocking and untimely deaths of two team owners, the collapse of two hockey leagues of which they were members, and several 11th hour rescues from financial calamity.
The Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association were the state of Utah’s first major league professional sports franchise. The team arrived in June 1970 after cable television pioneer Bill Daniels acquired and moved the ABA’s Los Angeles Stars club. During their charmed first season in Salt Lake City, the Stars broke the ABA attendance record and defeated the Kentucky Colonels for the league championship. The Stars also made history by signing 19-year old future Hall-of-Famer Moses Malone in 1974. Malone became the first player in the modern era to jump directly from high school to the pro game.
The Salt Lake City Stingers were a brief entry in the International Volleyball Association, a West Coast-based co-ed pro volleyball league during the 1970’s. Formed 1979, the Stingers featured a pair of top Olympians in Fernando de Avila (Brazil) and Stan Gosciniak (Poland) . While some IVA teams played in high school arenas, the Stingers played their home matches in the 12,000-seat Salt Palace, also home to the newly-arrived Jazz of the NBA.
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