Jazz: singular or plural

[Florwood]

This title in the Denver Post was sweet: "Jazz pushes Nuggets to brink of elimination in Game 6"

but it made me think, "I would have said, 'Jazz push Nuggets'" because I think the Jazz are plural. What do you think? Burning question of the day...

[Mars]

I would think that The Jazz and The Lakers are both plural. But I'm dumb.

"The Lakers is a good team." Is that incorrect? "L.A. is pretty good this year!" That's right. We are only talking about ONE team, aren't we?

Inquiring minds are smarter than mine.

[Schmoe]

When I think of a team, I think of a collective or group. If you were going to replace "The Jazz" or "The Lakers" with a pronoun, it would most likely be "they" and not "it." So, though it is somewhat flawed and does not work in all cases (nothing does in the English language), I would be inclined to use "The Jazz are" because I would also say "They are."

PS-I hope this makes sense to somebody.

[snoscythe]

They're just confused because of how one-dimensional their hometown team is.

[Schmoe]

They're just confused because of how one-dimensional their hometown team is.

Exactly! When you say "The Jazz," you think of D-Will, Boozer, Millsap, etc. as a unit, so you would say "they ARE." But when you think of the Nuggets, you think of their one real baller, Melo, and you think "he IS." No wonder they got confused.