Welcome to the Denver Nuggets bandwagon: An illustrated guide for fans arriving a little late (UPDATE after Game One)
My latest for the Colorado Sun. WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY PETER MOORE
THIS MAY COME AS A SURPRISE to some of you, but Denver has a professional basketball team. The team (known first as the Denver Larks, then the Rockets, then the Nuggets) migrated from the American Basketball Association in 1976 after losing the final ABA championship to the New York Nets. The Denver Nuggets have had some great moments since then, but none have resulted in the hoisting of championship hardware. Until now! (Possibly.)
The NBA finals got underway Thursday with the Nuggets beating the Miami Heat 104-93, so it’s more important than ever to catch up on the Mile High City’s most recent title contenders. Here are answers to all your band-wagoneering questions:
What is a bandwagon?
Fans who begin supporting a team only when it is on the verge of success; they will abandon that team when they stink (i.e., soon). (Don’t get us started with talk among television analysts who say the so-called lack of star power among Denver Nuggets or Miami Heat players will hurt the ratings of the series.)
If the Nuggets are a clown car, who is the head clown?
Glad you asked! That would be the Serbian supernova Nikola Jokić, i.e. “The Joker.” He is also known as “Cookie Monster,” “The Big Tipper,” “Yoke” and “Big Honey.”
None of those nicknames sound very intimidating. Is this Joker any good?
OK, OK, very impressive. But statistics are boring. What else is there to know about this Joker guy?
With all those accomplishments, he must have won the NBA Most Valuable Player award this year, right?
Actually, that’s an awkward question.
Are there other notable Nuggets?
It takes a hoops village, people!
They play at the Pepsi Center, right?
Jeez. Where have you been? Since 2020, the home of Denver’s NBA and NHL teams has been called Ball Arena, and this year the Nuggets are 8-0 in playoff games there. There are home-court conditions our guys are used to — and visitors are not.
Can they win it all?
Don’t bet against the Joker. As he showed us in game one, the Joker treats the NBA’s biggest stage like it’s a postage stamp.
For more hilarity from the high country and the Colorado Sun, click here.
Go Denver! It's about time! Go Djokic!!!
Hilarious! I knew nothing about basketball until reading this post - and now I feel fully qualified to get out there and shoot some hoops myself for the first time in my life!
In my first term at university I was approached to try out for the mixed basketball team. 'What, why?' I asked, tilting my head back 45 degrees so my gaze could actually reach the faces of the two rather nice looking chaps with very long legs standing in the doorway to my dorm. 'You're by far the tallest woman we've seen so far on campus. You'd be great!' came the reply.
I didn't stop laughing for days.