Utah Jazz Should Retire Mehmet Okur’s No. 13

By Ryan Aston | Mar 3, 2015

Make no mistake about it—Elijah Millsap has been a godsend for the Utah Jazz. His tenacity on defense and the energy he brings to the court have been an integral part of the team’s recent upturn.

He literally sacrificed his career to help his team.

I’ll forgive his propensity to turn the ball over and the fact that his true shooting percentage ranks in the bottom fifteen of the league. Despite his flaws, the pros have outweighed the cons in Millsap’s game. The only real issue I have with Millsap is the number on his jersey. A number that belonged to one Mehmet Okur.

With Carlos Boozer in Los Angeles with the Lakers and Deron Williams stuck with the Brooklyn Nets, Okur has been the organization’s only link to its most successful period of the last decade. During his seven years with the Jazz, he was a major component of the success that those teams had.

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Moreover, his dedication to the franchise and their goal of bringing a championship home to Salt Lake City rivaled that of any player on those rosters. For that reason, the team should retire his No. 13.

Some would argue that the team has too many jerseys hanging in the rafters as it is. Others would claim that Memo and those Jazz teams underachieved; that the center didn’t do enough see his number raised. It is the latter crowd that I take umbrage with.

To me, the criteria a player must meet to be deserving of the honor is pretty cut and dry. There are, of course, exceptions to everything, but on the whole I’ve always felt there are three things that should be taken into account when honoring players in this way.

First of all, a player should have longevity with the franchise; Okur spent the better part of a decade with the team. Secondly, a player should exhibit some kind of special quality or uniqueness. Something that contributes to the success of the franchise. In his time with the Jazz, Okur was an All-Star and arguably the best shooting big in the league not named Dirk Nowitzki.

His play was crucial in propelling the club to multiple playoff runs.

Finally, a player needs to exhibit dedication to his team and its community. Okur’s charitable efforts with the Jazz are too numerous to mention here. Instead, I will focus on the dedication he showed when he took the floor for game one of the team’s series with the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs.

Despite having issues with his Achilles tendon, Okur was out there for his team. Unfortunately, the stress was too much for Memo’s body and the tendon was ruptured. He would eventually return from the injury, but he was never the same again. The injury effectively ended not only his Jazz career, but his time as an NBA player in the years that followed.

In other words, he literally sacrificed his career to help his team.

Call me hyperbolic, but I was stunned when the team allowed Millsap to don Okur’s No. 13. Call me sentimental, but I would like to see Millsap make a change for next season, at which point the team should honor Memo. Call me crazy, but I’m going to shout to the rooftops until these things happen.

Few men left their mark on the Jazz organization to the degree that Okur did. To honor his contributions to the cause just makes sense. The Jazz need to do the right thing and place No. 13 up with the rest of the team’s honored greats. I implore the Miller family, as Captain Jean-Luc Picard might command, to “make it so!”

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