Every team has fans. Utah has people who will give a pre-game speech to an empty room just in case the team is listening.
This week, one of them was a kid named Hudson, and it turns out the team was listening.
The pep talk
On Sept. 30, Madison McBride Butcher posted a video to Instagram with the best possible setup: "Sometimes your phone goes missing and your kid is in the other room giving the Utah Jazz a pep talk."
That's exactly what it is. Hudson, in a Jazz jersey with a basketball in his hands, pointing at the camera and delivering a speech to the 2026-27 Utah Jazz with the conviction of a coach down 12 at halftime. He goes down the roster, and nobody gets left out. The line everyone is quoting: "Even you, Darryn Peterson!"
Ace Bailey gets his own assignment: "Okay, Ace Bailey and the other players, let's do good, okay?" Honestly, that's the whole game plan. Hardy can save himself a film session.
His mom's caption asked how many likes it would take for the Jazz to get him courtside. The answer, so far, is more than 100,000 likes and 1,400 comments. It spread to TikTok and Facebook, and then it went national: the NBA itself shared it ("This young fan hyped up the Jazz...and they hyped him back up 🥹"), and so did Ballislife. The comment section is Jazz fandom in a nutshell: "Yall gotta at least make the Play-in for lil bruh," and "If they don't win the finals it's over."
We shared it that night, because honestly:
"this kid's pep talk has more fire than some of our actual film sessions. Hudson, you're on the staff now @utahjazz #TakeNote"
— Jordan Pushed Off (@90s_jazz_fan), Sept. 30, 2026
Then the Jazz answered
The team didn't just repost it. On Oct. 2, the Jazz put out their own video: Will Hardy, Ace Bailey, and Darryn Peterson huddled around an iPad in the practice gym, watching Hudson's speech.
You can see the exact moment Peterson hears "Even you, Darryn Peterson!" He covers his face. Ace gets to watch a kid in a No. 3 jersey act out the Ace Bailey dunk, and he's grinning the whole time.
Then Hardy turned to the camera and made it official:
"Alright, Hudson. We need you at open practice, brother. You gotta come see us. You gotta pump the guys up like you're doing in this video."
Then Ace made sure it stuck, with a nod to Hudson's No. 3 jersey: "Yeah, lil three. We're gonna invite you to open practice, man... We need the energy, dawg."
Hudson's reaction
The video ends at home. Hudson watches it on his mom's phone, sees the players watching him, and comes apart in the best way: "Oh my gosh." Then he runs to his dad, buries his face in his shirt, and gets the line every dad should get to say once: "It's okay. They know who you are."
Everybody noticed
Hardy wasn't done, either. Asked about Hudson after practice, he gave the kind of answer you don't usually get from an NBA coach in training camp, per KSL Sports:
"There's no shortage of energy in Jazz Nation. I think Hudson's a great example of that. He's made me rethink my pregame talks. Maybe I need to ramp it up."
He added that there'd been "a lot of chatter throughout the building" since the video went viral. KSL filmed Hudson watching that press conference too, and asked him the only question that mattered: was he going to go? His answer was an extremely loud "Yes!"
The Jazz's official account shared the clip with a simple caption: "of course we had to show love to our favorite hype man." Jaren Jackson Jr. showed up in the Instagram comments, which means a former Defensive Player of the Year has now officially been coached up by Hudson.
According to the JazzNation fan page, which says it's been in touch with Hudson's dad, the Jazz have also reached out about getting him to a regular-season game.
And he's not done. KSL says Hudson will be on the Jazz Notes podcast on Monday to talk about his viral moment and "all things Utah Jazz." That's the same day as the team's open practice at the Delta Center (5 p.m., free). Busy day for a member of the staff.
Why this matters more than a cute video
It's easy to file this under "feel-good clip of the week" and move on. We think it says something real about this fan base.
Austin Ainge opened media day by thanking fans for 374 straight sellouts through a rebuild. Hudson is what that looks like at kid scale. He's been watching a team that was trying to lose, and he still knows the rookie's name well enough to call him out by it. He didn't get the memo that the Jazz were supposed to be boring for a few years, and he's going to remember this as the season the team noticed him.
Hardy said it better than we can. "We are hyper competitive and we want to win," he said. "We also represent a fan base and a community every day that is very passionate about our team." That's the deal. The team chases wins, and the fans keep showing up for the team, even when the team is losing on purpose.
Credit to the Jazz, too. Teams see viral fan clips every week. Answering this one quickly and personally, the week before the season tips off, costs almost nothing and buys a fan for life. That's how you build the next generation of people who will sell out 374 more.
And Darryn, for the record: even you.
Take note
Hudson's pep talk is better than ours, so we'll keep it short. The Jazz open the preseason Sunday in Boulder against Denver, then host the Nuggets on Tuesday. Check the full schedule. We'll be watching to see if the speech worked.
Video by @madi.butcher on Instagram. Follow-up via KSL Sports.