{"id":574070,"date":"2026-02-01T01:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T01:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/574070\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T01:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T01:13:12","slug":"the-first-person-who-wore-jazz-bear-costume-dies-after-cancer-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/574070\/","title":{"rendered":"The first person who wore &#8216;Jazz Bear&#8217; costume dies after cancer battle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 The first man to don the Utah Jazz&#8217;s iconic Bear mascot costume has passed away. <\/p>\n<p>Jon Absey spent nearly 25 years behind the &#8220;Jazz Bear&#8221; mask, starting back in 1994. <\/p>\n<p>Last year, <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13now.com\/news\/local-news\/original-man-behind-the-mask-of-utah-jazz-bear-fighting-pancreatic-cancer\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">he announced that he was battling pancreatic cancer.<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>Family and friends of Absey confirmed Saturday that he passed away from the disease. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Rest in Peace, Jon Absey,&#8221; the Facebook page Jazz Nation wrote. &#8220;We are grateful for your exceptional contributions both on and off the court.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 The first man to don the Utah Jazz&#8217;s iconic Bear mascot costume has passed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3785],"tags":[7,423,6,4315,422,427,3972],"class_list":{"0":"post-574070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-jazz","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-salt-lake-city","12":"tag-utah","13":"tag-utah-jazz","14":"tag-utahjazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115992723759220389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}