The Denver Nuggets’ Rise to Becoming NBA Champions Marks a New Beginning for the City
Denver is a basketball city.
It’s a simple but important designation that has become a rallying cry of sorts for fans who’ve waited nearly half a century to be taken seriously on the game’s biggest stage. Because despite the lazy misnomer that Denver is some barren mountain town only capable of football obsession, hoops culture in this part of the country has been thriving. And now, for the very first time, that basketball city is home to the best basketball team in the world.
It has taken exactly 47 years, 29 trips to the playoffs and one exceptionally talented man from Serbia to fully exorcise the NBA demons that have haunted this land for decades. That’s not even taking into consideration the extra nine campaigns that Denver spent in the ABA prior, each also ending in postseason heartbreak. But that was then.
This is now; a now where the Denver Nuggets really are world champions and a fan base can finally break free from playoff purgatory. It’s a beautiful outcome for a dream that has been brewing for years, with a team culture all their own. Equipped with a starting unit all age 30 or under and all returning next season, it might actually be the beginning of a whole new future for both the franchise and city, too.
Having grown up in Denver myself, it’s also something I’ve thought about for well over two decades. What if they actually won it?
So, as Kentavious Caldwell-Pope snatched that final rebound in the waning moments of Game 5 against Miami, and confetti rained down from the Ball Arena heavens above, it made me reflect on the road the Nuggets took to get there. On how far the city has come in reclaiming its passion for the sport. And on how powerful the connection to both a team and a hometown can be for so many.
Let’s take it back. I didn’t inherit this path—I chose it. As the son of a Midwestern salesman and realtor, my family moved around a lot before settling down in the surprisingly vast metropolitan sprawl of Denver, CO. After living in basketball-obsessed cities like Chicago and Dayton, OH, I touched down in Denver in 1998. The Nuggets had won just 11 games all season and couldn’t fill their arena. It wasn’t exactly electric, but it was the beginning. The Nuggets have held a piece of my heart since, but it took a minute to capture everyone else’s.
The thing about Denver is that despite its mid-market classification, it’s still a city with teams in all four major professional sports—three of which have been crowned champions since 2015. If we’re talking about the last decade, the Mile High City has as good a case as any for the distinction of Title Town. So, fighting for relevancy and attention doesn’t always come easy, even locally.
One thing that is sure to bind the masses, though, is an underdog. And what’s great about an underdog story is that it can assume many forms. It can be about a city that feels overlooked and miscast as some small David out west. It can be about a franchise that was close to glory before, but never able to summit the mountain until now.
It can be about Jamal Murray, a flamethrower from Kitchener, Ontario, returning stronger after a devastating knee injury to light up the 2023 Playoffs. Or Nikola Jokic, a back-to-back MVP from Sombor, Serbia, who has defied both logic and expectation at every turn since he was drafted 41st overall. Similar can be said about players up and down this roster, from Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr to Bruce Brown and rookie Christian Braun. Each carries a chip on their respective shoulders—both individually and together as one.
This town has always embraced that underdog mentality, and its basketball team has embodied that to its core.
Head coach Michael Malone knew that when he first came to Denver in 2015. So did the front office when it went to work rebuilding a team in that image.
Think what you want about his delivery methods, but there’s nothing vague about both Malone’s personality or the culture he’s worked to instill. He’s direct, often bluntly so, passionate and intensely steadfast about what the mission at hand is—driving home the narrative, round after round, that Denver was disrespected and overlooked. Whether you agree or not, that locker room believed it in its bones. Underdog fuel.
Hell, Malone popped off one of the greatest championship parade performances of all time at the podium, and I’m confident it was only partially due to the cinnamon whiskey coursing through his veins. Still, all that fire(ball) and fierceness only goes so far unless your players are buying into the message. Thankfully for Denver, if playing the role of challenger is the script bonding its players together, selflessness is the super glue keeping anything from falling apart.
“When we win a championship, it’s 17 players strong,” said Malone in front of an estimated 750,000 Nuggets faithful at the championship parade, screaming until his voice was gone. “It’s the coaching staff, it’s the front office, it’s the ownership, but more importantly, it’s all of you [the fans].”
He paused slightly before extending out the mission.
“Y’all wanna do it again? Let’s do this. Dynasty. Dynasty. Dynasty. I love y’all.”
You could almost feel him working through next season’s narrative in real time. Surely no one believes they can repeat again next year, right??? Underdog fuel.
These Nuggets have embraced the journey. They play for each other and often talk about how, to win for the next man, you’ve gotta sacrifice your own ego at the door. Every player, every coach, every fan. That’s the only way you can break a curse that’s lasted 47 years—and how you run through Minnesota, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Miami to do it. You’ve got to earn it.
I’ve never been to a championship parade before, so I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect.
I definitely didn’t expect that upwards of 750,000 people would come out to celebrate on a Thursday morning. But they did—littered in championship swag, Mile High jerseys and about a thousand shirts featuring Murray and Jokic photoshopped onto the Step Brothers movie poster.
It also became clear that not only had the city’s passion and mentality rubbed off on the team, but the fans had taken a page straight from the Nuggets handbook.
What’s immediately evident when you watch Denver play is that they all seem to genuinely like each other. In every interview and at every opportunity, each player on the team comes back to this central point: they root for the guy next to them. And granted, every fan who found themselves at the parade was there to celebrate a literal world championship, but for at least a few hours it did feel like everyone in the city genuinely liked each other, too. Not one of them can drop a 30-point triple-double in the Finals, so maybe that’s where the similarities end, but it was admittedly cool to see.
For a guy who has largely watched this current team blossom and grow from a thousand miles away in California, it was a bit surreal to see how many, and how much, other people truly cared.
It meant something to these fans, and it means something to this city. That something is different for everyone, including Jokic, who also provided the most notable on-stage appearance of parade day.
When it was finally his turn at the microphone, he stood there for a minute and waited, smiling and taking in the overwhelming chants of “M-V-P” below, with his entire team hyping up the crowd from behind. That moment of crowd swell felt like an avalanche of joy and relief. Like a great communal weight had finally been lifted.
Being a fan of anything is a journey, and it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. A connection to home, a love for the game, a family bond, a piece of a community. For 47 years, this community has seen the ups and downs of where that journey can take you. From the lottery to the bubble to the Finals. The painful lows only made the epic ascent mean that much more. You’ve got to earn it.
Yet, and rightfully so, none of that seemed to matter much as Joker finally quieted the crowd back down to reality. In the end, maybe we don’t need to overcomplicate it, but rather just enjoy the view. Especially when you’re looking at it from an all-new elevation.
“I f—ing want to stay on parade,” said Joker smiling to the crowd. “This is amazing. We are all going to remember this our whole lives.
“We love you Denver, this one is for you.”
Amen, brother. It’s finally a parade inside my basketball city, yeah.
SLAM 245 featuring Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets is available now.
Photos via Getty Images.
