{"id":574200,"date":"2026-02-01T02:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T02:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/574200\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T02:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T02:42:10","slug":"first-jazz-bear-mascot-dies-of-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/574200\/","title":{"rendered":"First &#8216;Jazz Bear&#8217; mascot dies of cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He performed as the Utah NBA team\u2019s mascot for nearly 25 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption-credit\">(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jazz Bear waves a flag before a game in 2017.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-raw\">The first man to don the Utah Jazz\u2019s iconic Bear mascot costume has died.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-raw\">Jon Absey spent nearly 25 years behind the \u201cJazz Bear\u201d mask, starting in 1994. <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-raw\">Last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13now.com\/news\/local-news\/original-man-behind-the-mask-of-utah-jazz-bear-fighting-pancreatic-cancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">he announced that he was battling pancreatic cancer.<\/a> <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-raw\">Family and friends of Absey confirmed Saturday that he died from the disease. <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-raw\">\u201cRest in Peace, Jon Absey,\u201d the Jazz Nation Facebook page wrote. \u201cWe are grateful for your exceptional contributions both on and off the court.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-raw\">See the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13now.com\/sports\/utah-jazz\/the-first-person-who-wore-jazz-bear-costume-dies-after-cancer-battle\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.fox13now.com\/sports\/utah-jazz\/the-first-person-who-wore-jazz-bear-costume-dies-after-cancer-battle\">FOX 13 story<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-raw\">Note to readers \u2022 The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 are content-sharing partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He performed as the Utah NBA team\u2019s mascot for nearly 25 years. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3785],"tags":[77773,7,423,6,66,3209,422,427,3972],"class_list":{"0":"post-574200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-77773","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-jazz","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-usa","14":"tag-utah","15":"tag-utah-jazz","16":"tag-utahjazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115993072010481291","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574200","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=574200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}