The blacktop baked in the 95-degree sun, and the air was thick with smoke from fires that would eventually tint the sky red.

If that sounds like a postcard from hell, maybe that’s why so many Utah Jazz fans waited there in line for hours, grinning.

It was the day they were getting out.

After four long years of rebuilding, losing 221 games along the way, Tuesday’s NBA draft marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another for basketball fans here.

So, they showed up in the parking lot of The Shops at South Town starting early in the morning. Some wore vintage jerseys of Jazz legends, reminders of the glory days of John Stockton and Karl Malone, and some wore with hope the names of the current team’s young stars, Keyonte George or Ace Bailey.

Shortly after 6 p.m., the thousands of fans that had gathered were chanting one more name.

“Darryn! Darryn!”

Moments later, the Jazz made the second pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, selecting Kansas dynamo Darryn Peterson. The suffering fans erupted in cheers as Peterson strolled across the stage in Brooklyn, N.Y., and donned a black hat with the Jazz’s note logo.

“Now’s our time,” said Adrian Lopez, one of the many fans in attendance Tuesday evening. “We got our draft pick, we got our team, it’s all coming together.”

Inside the Jazz’s practice facility, President of Basketball Operations Austin Ainge wore a cheesy grin, sharing the same feelings of the Jazz faithful celebrating just a few miles away.

“We’re so excited to add Darryn,” Ainge said in his first remarks to the media. “It’s just a culmination of a lot of patience and a lot of building, right? And we’re just really grateful for our fans and the fact that they’ve stuck with us through this rebuild.”

It’s no secret that the Jazz have struggled since they traded away two cornerstone stars — Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell — four years ago. They’ve accumulated just a 107-221 record since then, and nearly the entire roster has turned over in the rebuild. Ratings have dropped. While attendance remarkably hasn’t fallen (the team’s sellout streak has remained strong), ticket prices have.

But the drafting of Peterson — widely considered one of the best NBA prospects of the decade, a guard who has been spoken about for years among NBA draftniks — signals what could be an upcoming change in fortunes.

“It’s a new young core and I’m excited to go be a part of it,” Peterson said from the draft in Brooklyn. “We have a lot of great players and I’m blessed to be in a situation where we can win right away.”

On paper, it’s a strong fit. Peterson fills right into the Jazz’s shooting guard hole, with several All-Star-caliber players already around him. Peterson said that the backcourt of him and George should be “one of the best backcourts in the NBA”.

Up front, the Jazz added two-way stalwart Jaren Jackson Jr. to the lineup at the deadline earlier this year, placing him next to former All-Star Lauri Markkanen and burly center Walker Kessler.

And Ainge believes Peterson is just barely scratching the surface of what he believes is a “very complete” player at just 19 years old.

“He fits us super well,” Ainge said. “It feels like he can help all of our other talented players in a lot of different ways.”

Back at the Jazz’s watch party, there were a few royal blue AJ Dybantsa BYU jerseys amid the sea of purple and mountain blue. For those who were both BYU and Utah Jazz fans, Dybantsa was the guy they sought after.

While there was some disappointment when the Wizards selected Dybantsa No. 1 overall, the overarching sentiment at Tuesday’s watch party was that Peterson was the right selection.

“I’ve been back and forth between [Peterson] and Dybantsa, but I think Peterson has the highest ceiling out of all of them,” said Jessica Blumel, a fan from Midvale. “I think we got the best player in the draft, honestly.”

Peterson will see his first action in a Jazz uniform in the upcoming Salt Lake City Summer League, taking place from July 4-7 at the University of Utah’s Jon M. Huntsman Center. He’ll match up against Memphis’ No. 3 pick Cameron Boozer and the Oklahoma City Thunder’s No. 12 pick Aday Mara in those games.

But he already got his first look at his new fans’ passion. In a video shared online, Peterson smiled and nodded as he was shown footage of the thousands who showed up for him on Tuesday.

“Hopefully we can go in and be one of those teams that [can] go deep in the playoffs and get a championship,” he said.

And, for the first time in a long time, there may be some Jazz fans who believe that’s a possibility. That’s why they showed up early, hoping that whatever smoky breeze they felt might really be the winds of change.