Nuggets make Denver a hoops town with first trip to NBA Finals

DENVER (AP) —It took 3,787 regular-season games and 29 trips to the playoffs,countless ripoffs of rainbow uniforms and even more ‘yeah, buts’than any city should have to stomach. Finally, 47 seasons into anentertaining, often frustrating and almost always overlookedjourney in the NBA, Denver is at the center of the basketballworld.

The Nuggets —yes, thosesometimes-lovableand often-forgettable Nuggets— are in the NBA Finals.

The way theymade it says everything about their near half-century in theleague, and just how different this team is from every Denver team,even the really good ones, that preceded it.

The Nuggetsbrushed aside their long-held irrelevance by completing their firstsweep in 44 NBA playoff series. Theydidit against the Los Angeles Lakers, the team that has causedthem so much of their pain. Before the Western Conference finals,Denver was 0-7 in playoff series against the Lakers. Now, Denver is1-7.

“It’s almostlike shock a little bit,” Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon said,echoing a sentiment certainly being felt across the franchise’slong-suffering fan base. “You’re just like unsure, like, are yousure we don’t have more time on the clock? Are you sure we don’thave another quarter to play or another game to play?”

With all duerespect to Dan Issel, Alex English, Carmelo Anthony and everyoneelse who ever wore rainbows, Nikola Jokic is the best player to puton a Denver uniform. He recorded his eighth triple-double of theplayoffs in Monday night’s 113-111 win over LA, surpassing a recordfor a single postseason held by none other than Lakers great WiltChamberlain.

Jokic, whowas 0.2 assists short of averaging a triple-double this season, gotbeat out for his third straight MVP this season by Philly’s JoelEmbiid. Fans see it all as par for the course in a city where theteam that debuted in the ABA as the Denver Rockets — not thebetter-known, better-respected Denver Broncos — really put the townon the national sports map. That was in 1967. The Broncos werestill a laughingstock but the local basketball team put out a goodproduct right away.

It was goodenough to make the Nuggets a no-brainer when the ABA folded in 1976and the NBA went picking through the wreckage to invite a few teamsto join.

Between thenand now, the city has seen its share of the spotlight. John Elwaybrought two Super Bowl titles home and Peyton Manning another. TheColorado Avalanche, who share a home (Ball Arena) and an owner(Stan Kroenke) with the Nuggets, have won hockey’s Stanley Cupthree times, including last year. Even the Colorado Rockies havebeen to the World Series. The Nuggets only trip this close to thetitle came in 1976 when they lost in the last ABA final to JuliusErving and the Nets.

DavidThompson; Larry Brown; Doug Moe; English; Issel; Anthony; GeorgeKarl; Allen Iverson; Chauncey Billups. All those coaches andplayers spent time in Denver. None ever got too close to that NBAtitle trophy while here. Before this week, Denver made the NBAconference finals four times, and lost all four.

It conspiredto make the place little more than flyover territory — a city withhigh altitude that the schedule makers often tuck into other teams’itineraries as part of long road trips with more exciting finaldestinations — LA, New York, Miami.

But Denver?It was a great place to take a night off — or, put morediplomatically, for teams to exercise the 21st-century NBA practiceof “load management” for their best players.

While NBAtitles, and the fanfare that comes with them, have been built onthe shoulders of megastars for decades, the Nuggets never were partof that scene.

In fact,Jokic was the exact opposite of that when he arrived in 2014.Rather, he was a doughy second-round draft pick known only to theinsiders who followed the Serbian hoops scene.

“Everybodygets cracked up into his stats but I don’t think a lot of peopletalk about, like, this part of his game,” LeBron James of theLakers said after the sweep, as he pointed toward his head,indicating Jokic’s mastery of the cerebral part of hoops. “Maybeit’s not talked about it, because a lot of people don’t understandit, but I do. He’s special.”

Great asJokic has been, it’s the addition of another under-the-radarplayer, guard Jamal Murray, and his return to full health thathelped get this team over the top.

Murray was alottery pick out of Kentucky in 2016, the year Ben Simmons was thetop pick and considered the NBA’s Next Big Thing. Murray blew up inthe bubble during COVID, bringing Denver within a series of thefinals, only to see the Lakers snuff out another season. He missedthe next two playoffs due to a devastating knee injury. Theseplayoffs, Murray is feeling great. He averaged 32.5 points in thefour-game sweep of LA.

“I think ourchemistry is at an all-time high, the way we play, the way we readthe game without even speaking,” Murray said. “We talk thatlanguage on the court.

“It’s justbeautiful basketball, honestly.”

With theNuggets in their first NBA Finals after all these years, it will behard to find anyone in Denver who would argue with that.