Mike Crane Twitter profile photo
Mike Crane, right, and his son, Ryan, at the 2018 NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles. Mike Crane has donated $5 to the 5 for the Fight charity after every Utah Jazz win since the team began using it as its jersey patch sponsor during the 2017-18 season.
SALT LAKE CITY — As the Utah Jazz cut a 15-point deficit to just one with 11 minutes remaining in their 2017-2018 season opener against the Denver Nuggets at Vivint Arena, Mike Crane came up with an idea.
The then-39-year-old pharmacist had seen commercials for 5 for the Fight, a charitable arm of the Utah-based company Qualtrics, which encourages people to donate money to cancer research $5 at a time and had become the Jazz’s jersey patch sponsor in the first year the NBA allowed them.
With the ads in mind showing prominent Utahns holding up their hands with names written on them of people who have had cancer, the native of Springville who attended the University of Utah during the Jazz’s NBA Finals runs in the late 1990s and moved to Las Vegas after graduation in 2001 somewhat nonchalantly made a proposal on Twitter.
“Who’s up to donate $5 to this 5 for the fight thing if the Jazz win?,” Crane wrote.
Utah went on to earn a 106-96 victory, and Crane donated $5 to the charity. Later that night, he declared on Twitter that he would donate every time the Jazz won during the season. He did so as Utah made it to the second round of the playoffs, and has started again this season.
Crane doesn’t have someone too closely connected to him whose life was cut short because of the disease (his grandmother did have cancer when she passed away, although Crane says her death was more because of her advanced age), which in a way was a reason he thought of the idea — he reasoned he’d put his donations toward the Jazz’s general efforts.
“I figure for five bucks a game, if they’re going to keep winning and doing good things, it’s kind of fun,” Crane told the Deseret News. “I mean, a couple hundred dollars over a whole year isn’t too bad.”
As Utah struggled through a rough first 47 games last season, Crane started to join other fans in using #TankNote on Twitter, a spinoff of the team’s #TakeNote trademark. Then on Jan. 24, the Jazz earned another come-from-behind win, this time on the road in overtime against the Detroit Pistons.
That night, Crane tweeted, “Donation time! If#TankNote is gonna fail, at least cancer research will benefit!”
The victory wound up being the first of 11 straight Utah grabbed after it lost 17 of its previous 23, and started the team’s remarkable 29-6 finish.
“Obviously I was just joking with the ‘Tank note’ last year, just kind of going with everybody else to mess around with that,” Crane said. “Luckily they pulled out of it. It was definitely a good thing.”
The Jazz say they raised $1.1 million for 5 for the Fight last season, and the organization is now running with the idea of encouraging fans to donate after wins. On Nov. 1, they formally launched a campaign where people can pledge to give after each Utah victory (or a one-time pledge).
Different levels of giving will allow donors to receive various gifts, from a Jazz photo to tickets to an exclusive on-court event at Vivint Arena (further details of which have not been released).
“When the Jazz win, cancer loses,” says the slogan for the new campaign.
According to a CNBC report on Tuesday, Qualtrics founders remain committed to 5 for the Fight despite the fact that the company was sold on Sunday to German tech giant SAP. That news received a thumbs up on Twitter from Utah point guard Ricky Rubio, whose mother passed away from cancer in May of 2016, causing him to become a major ambassador for various cancer research foundations, including 5 for the Fight.
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Jae Crowder’s mother also passed away from cancer in 2017, while Alec Burks has worn pink shoes this season to honor his fiancee’s cousin who has breast cancer, Joe Ingles’ close friend Jarryd Roughead dealt with the disease a few years ago and the team continues to support young superfan JP Gibson, who is battling it for the second time.
Count Crane as one who hopes people take the Jazz’s new pledge.
“It’s a cup of coffee or whatever once every three days or every six days when the Jazz win,” he said. “Over a six month period, for 300 dollars or 250 bucks or whatever they ended up winning (last season), that’s not that big of a deal, but if enough people do it, then it becomes a big deal.”