By Alex Trickett BBC Sport Online

The teams

Baseball: None
American Football: None
Basketball: Jazz
Ice Hockey: None

How does a state better known for its Mormon chant than its saxophone come by a basketball team called the Utah Jazz?

Miles away: Jazz play away from their spiritual home

True to a US sports' franchise system, which always sides with business viability over regional loyalty, Salt Lake City benefited from a western expansion that also took the Minneapolis Lakers to barren LA.

The Jazz have settled well in their unlikely new home.

From being a losing team in New Orleans, they transformed into one of the NBA's most consistent performers in Salt Lake City, losing in the NBA finals of 1998 and 1999.

Utah owes a debt to its Jazz, without whose sporting pedigree its Olympic dream may never have been realised.

The venue

Home to minor league ice hockey team the Utah Grizzlies, the E-Center is one of the premier venues at the Winter Games of 2002.

Raise the roof: US team beat USSR in 1980

It will stage a full complement of speed skating events, as well as a fast, furious and fiercely contested ice hockey tournament.

Completed in September 1997, the E-Center seats up to 12,000 in its "state-of-the-art" arena.

It might yet have its roof blown off, however, should the USA beat old foes Russia or Canada to strike ice hockey gold on 24 February.

The legends

Some sporting legends are inextricably linked - San Francisco's Joe Montana and Jerry Rice for example - but Utah boasts a deadly double-act that might just as well have been bound at the hip.

Inseperable: Stockton (left) and Malone

Together since the mid-1980s, Karl Malone and John Stockton have formed a basketball partnership as close to balanced perfection as is possible.

"Mailman" Malone is the forceful scoring presence inside and Stockton - fleet of foot and mind - can be relied upon to deliver him the perfect pass.

At a time when player loyalty is unusual, the duo have pledged their entire careers to the Jazz, coming painfully close to the NBA title twice, only to be thwarted by Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls.

No matter. Malone has scored more league points than anyone not called Kareem Abdul-Jabar, while Stockton is the all-time assist leader by a massive margin.

Man about town

It is hard to look past fading legends Stockton and Malone, but Salt Lake City desperately needs to find new basketball heroes if it is to enjoy NBA success in the future.

Deshawn: Slam-dunk for the future

DeShawn Stevenson is showing considerable potential.

At 19 years old, the versatile guard became the youngest player to ever start for the Jazz, having passed up on the chance to join basketball-mad University of Kansas.

Stevenson featured largely as a bench-player in his first full season, but has stepped up of late, scoring points, earning assists and playing hard at the defensive end.