SALT LAKE CITY — Joe Ingles wasn’t the same Joe Ingles.

The man that fans and teammates have come to know for his quick wit and boisterous talk on and off the court had gone mostly silent. He’d walk into the Jazz practice facility, go through a practice or shootaround and leave with saying much — if anything — to anybody.

“That just wasn’t me,” Ingles said. “I didn't even, at the time, realize I was doing that.”

His mind was, understandably, on something else.

On February 13, Joe and his wife Renae announced to the world that their son Jacob had been diagnosed with autism. The announcement provided a glimpse of what the family had gone through over the preceding months: the countless appointments, the sleepless nights, the worry.

That all led to Ingles’ uncharacteristic silence.

But he’s not silent anymore.

“Once we went public,” Renae Ingles said, “I got my husband back. I don’t think we realized that he had a weight on his shoulder and same for me.”

On Wednesday night, fans will receive a rally towel that reads, “Let’s talk about autism” as part of the Utah Jazz’s autism awareness night.

It’s that conversation that has helped lighten the burden for the Ingles and for countless families around Utah and the world. And one the Ingles are hoping will help families going forward.

Learning about autism

From the day that Jacob and his twin sister Milla were born, the Ingles were told not to compare their two kids. They would develop at different speeds, have their own personality, choose to do different things.

“Which is a really really easy thing to say but an impossible thing to do,” Renae Ingles said.

Around six months ago, as the Ingles saw how Milla interacted with other kids and heard how she talked, they couldn’t help compare that to Jacob’s development.

“They were pools apart,” Renae Ingles said. "It was doing what everyone told us not to do and comparing the twins and trusting our gut.”

They began asking questions and began getting Jacob tested. And they found out he was on the spectrum.

There’s a sensory room on the upper bowl concourse of Vivint Arena. The room was built to be a safe space for children with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities. It was also a room that, until recently, Joe Ingles didn’t know much about.

“I guess you kind of know it’s there, but we had never been in there,” Joe Ingles said. “I’d never even seen it.”

That mirrored his knowledge of autism, in general. He had heard about it and had a basic idea of what it was — but that’s where his knowledge ended. Joe Ingles didn’t know how it really affected kids, how it could be treated and how many children were impacted by it.

He does now.

And he wants everyone else to know, too. Not to understand what he and his family are going through, but so they know if they should get their own children tested.

“There are 1 in 54 kids here in Utah,” Joe Ingles said. “Which is extremely high. It’s growing too. … You feel guilty because you have done what you thought would be fun activities for him. But on the other hand, that Milla loves. Just the awareness, putting it out there and talking about it.”

He wants to talk about it because the earlier a child is diagnosed, the better. Jacob now has therapy for nearly five hours per day — a few hours in the morning, a couple more in the afternoon. And the Ingles can already attest to how much it has helped their son.

“The last three weeks, he has come out of his shell even more,” Joe Ingles said. “Which has been pretty awesome to see. To hear his voice for the first time, you don’t really forget. You kind of take those things for granted when you have a daughter that’s talking too much.”

The support

There’s a photo of the Ingles family that appears at the end of a video segment the Jazz plan to show on Wednesday with Joe holding his son tightly against him. After seeing the video spot — and that image specifically — Jazz coach Quin Snyder couldn’t help but get emotional.

“(It) made me feel really good knowing what he has been through his year,” Snyder said. “The challenges that they have faced as a family. With him being on the road and they being here, I know those times were really hard for him.”

Joe Ingles talked to Snyder early on in the process, detailing to his coach what his family was dealing with and what the plan was for Jacob. But the Jazz forward also wanted his coach to know that he didn’t want days off. He planned on being at every practice and every game.

Snyder understood but also let Joe know that if he needed any time, he could take it.

“He was unreal,” Joe Ingles said.

That support was echoed by his teammates as he began to reveal to more and more of them what he was going through. And then, after the Ingles went public about Jacob’s diagnosis, the support came from all over the world.

Renae Ingles had a goal to answer every letter and message that came from the post. But that soon became unrealistic — very unrealistic.

“I was going to write back to everyone, then I was like, ‘Woah, I want to see my family’ just because the support was so incredible,” Renae Ingles said.

Some messages the Ingles received detailed other family’s experiences with autism. And with those, the Ingles found they were giving a number of families a voice to share their own stories.

“Our story felt like we were telling their story to the world,” Joe Ingles said.

And it’s a story that they will continue to share.

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