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Denver Nuggets: From Mile High Outsiders to NBA Champions

“Nuggets win franchise’s first NBA championship after holding off Heat in Game 5” – a headline that sent an ecstatic frenzy through the city of Denver and the NBA world.  

The Denver Nuggets completed the grueling and arduous challenge of winning a title after grinding out a tense and tight 94-89 closeout win against the tenacious, gritty Miami Heat.

Nikola Jokic was pivotal to this triumph. The Serb center was unsurprisingly named Finals MVP after his phenomenal performances in the Finals and throughout the playoff run. He joins New York Knicks legend Willis Reed as the only other second-round pick to win the Finals MVP award and now cements himself as one of the all-time greats the game has ever witnessed. Jokic is only the 11th man to win at least 2 regular- season NBA MVPs and 1 NBA Finals MVP trophy- an exclusive club.

Jokic averaged 30 points, 13.5 rebounds and 9.5 assists in 20 games in the 2023 playoffs, and most impressively made noticeable defensive contributions to silence his critics-recording a respectable 107.7 defensive rating during the corresponding period. Denver went 16-4 during its playoff run, and Jokic led the playoffs in all points, rebounds and assists- becoming the first player in NBA history to achieve this during the postseason. 

It has been quite a journey for the Nuggets, who have experienced both the highs and lows in their franchise history. Whilst they were one of the talented teams in the Western Conference, many doubted their ability to have a deep playoff run at the start of the campaign. Michael Malone’s team, in usual fashion, responded to the critics with their play on the field, finishing the 2022-23 regular season with a record of 53-29 — the best record in the Western Conference and maintained their levels in the postseason. Some may deem it as ‘destiny’ but the journey to stardom wasn’t by coincidence.

The Nuggets previously reached the Western Conference Finals four times (1978, 1985, 2009 and 2020) in their history-remarkably losing to the same opponent (Los Angeles Lakers) on each occasion, but they finally overcame that hurdle this season. Once they completed their first objective of making the Finals, the next one was simple- to become Champions.

The Early Days 

After experiencing the highs of the then American Basketball Association (ABA), the Nuggets were faced with a new low upon switching to the unified National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1975 as they failed to translate their previous successes into the newly formed league. Experiencing constant post-season heartbreak between 1974 and 1979, many expected the tides to turn for good. Sadly, things went downhill for the Nuggets. They were hit with financial issues – including a $2 million NBA entry fee and in 1978, their franchise was rescued by Billy Joe “Red” McCombs’s purchase of the team, salvaging their financial burden

In 1979, head coach Larry Brown left the team, an act which ushered in further decline to a team struggling to find its feet.

This “certain death” decline ended in 1981 when they hired Doug Moe as a head coach. Moe brought with him a ‘motion offence’ philosophy, a style of play focusing on attempting to move the ball relentlessly until someone got open.

The offensive strategy helped the team become highly competitive. During the 1980s, the Nuggets averaged 119 points per game over the decade, and during the 1981–82 season, they remarkably scored at least 100 points in every game! The NBA-record streak was halted at 136 consecutive games. During the aforementioned season, the Nuggets set the league scoring record for the highest points per game average at 126.5 points.

The Period of Decline 1989–1991

Doug Moe left the team in 1990 and was replaced by Paul Westhead. Westhead styles his team on a philosophy regarded as the “run and gun” style of play, giving the green light for players to light up the scoreboards within seconds of possession.

However, Westhead’s style of play – which cared less about defending than his predecessor Moe, saw the Nuggets become leaky on the defensive end, to the extent that even their prolific offence could not keep up and save them in games. They finished with the worst record in the league during the 1990–91 season, despite setting a handful of scoring records. As an insult, many sportswriters nicknamed the team at the time as the “Enver Nuggets” (as in no “D”, or no defence).

The repeated struggle: 1996-2003 

Between 1991 and 1996, Denver fired Westhead and experienced a host of head coach changes until eventually settling for General Manager/Coach Bernie Bickerstaff.

After finishing the 1996–97 season with the fourth-worst record in the league (21–61), the Nuggets flirted with (negative) history in 1997–98, by nearly setting the mark for fewest wins in an 82-game season – 11. They tied the then-NBA’s all-time worst single-season losing streak at 23—only one game shy of the overall worst mark of 24 by the Cleveland Cavaliers of the early 1980s. The losing streak was later broken by the Cavaliers in 2011 and the Philadelphia 76ers in 2014 with 26 consecutive losses. 

Stan Kroenke purchase – a new lease of life

In July 2000, real estate entrepreneur Stan Kroenke in a $450 million deal bought the Nuggets. As part of the deal, Kroenke placed the team into a trust that would ensure the team will stay in Denver until at least 2025, thereby resolving a long lingering issue of a home for the Nuggets. Under Kroenke’s reign, the Nuggets drafted future All-Star Carmelo Anthony, who was the third overall pick in the 2003 NBA draft, sparking a cultural (and performance) shift in the Mile High city.

In just two months of the season, the Nuggets recorded more wins than they had in five and half months of play in 2002–03. Much of the reason for this incredible turnaround were the front-office moves of General Manager (GM) Kiki Vandeweghe, a former Nuggets player who assumed GM duties on August 9, 2001.

In April, the turnaround was complete as they became the first franchise in NBA history to qualify for the postseason following a sub-20-win campaign the previous year since the NBA went to an 82-game schedule. They were eliminated in the first round in a gentleman’s sweep (4-1) by the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The seasons between 2004 and 2011 saw the Nuggets punch above their weight and on occasions, they fell short of what was glory. 

The 2011-12 season saw the departure of Carmelo Anthony who was traded to the New York Knicks in a multi-player deal. The first full season of the post-Melo Nuggets saw the steady rise of Danilo Gallinari, who averaged 17 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.6 assists through the first 25 games of the season, which resulted in the Nuggets’ best start through the first 20 games. Still plagued with a near-success syndrome after their first-round playoff elimination in the hands of Golden state warriors, the Nuggets parted ways with long-time coach George Karl.

Although Karl won that year’s NBA Coach of the Year Award and had led Denver to the playoffs in every year of his nine-year tenure, it was not enough to keep him from being fired after the season.

2015–present: The Nikola Jokić era, Nugget’s first NBA championship

On June 15, 2015, at the end of the 2014–15 season, Michael Malone was named as the new head coach of the Denver Nuggets. 

With youths at the fulcrum of his team, Malone’s Denver Nuggets slightly started to improve while primarily relying on youngsters including Emmanuel Mudiay, Nikola Jokić, Gary Harris, and Jusuf Nurkić.

In the 2020–21 NBA season and still under the guidance of Malone, Jokić was named the NBA Most Valuable Player, becoming the first centre since Shaquille O’Neal in 2000 and the first player in Nuggets franchise history to win the award.

He also became the first Serbian player, and the third European player overall (along with Dirk Nowitzki of Germany and Giannis Antetokounmpo of Greece), to ever win the award.

Although the Nuggets finished the season with the third seed in the Western Conference and beat their first-round opponents, the Portland Trail Blazers, in six games, the loss of starting guard Jamal Murray to an ACL tear contributed to the team’s sweep by the eventual Western Conference champions, the second-seeded Phoenix Suns.

The following season saw more rotten injury luck for the Denver Nuggets. Nine games into the season, starting forward Michael Porter Jr. joined Murray on the sidelines with season-ending back surgery. In spite of the injuries, Jokić and starting power forward Aaron Gordon carried the Nuggets to the sixth seed, the former becoming the first-ever player in NBA history to accumulate 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, and 500 assists in a single season. The “Joker” went on to receive the Kia MVP Award for the second year in a row – joining 12 other players in NBA history to achieve the award in back-to-back years, and the first centre to do so since Moses Malone in 1982 and 1983.

In the first round of the playoffs, Jokić’s Nuggets fell to the Golden State Warriors in five games, who then went on to win the Championship.

Moving to the 2022-23 season, the boys from Denver were ultimately rewarded for their consistent excellence, not just throughout this season but as a perennial playoff team over the last five seasons. While fans and analysts were well infatuated with the sixth-seed Warriors and seventh-seed Lakers, Denver continued to go about their business as the best team in the Western Conference.

In the playoffs, the Nuggets defeated the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games before beating the Phoenix Suns in six games. The Nuggets then swept the Los Angeles Lakers en route to the Western Conference Finals.

Though many would dub the triumph of the Nuggets as scrappy or ugly but as ugly as it was, the aftermath was something the Nuggets and their fans could all agree was beautiful. There were fireworks exploding outside Ball Arena at the final buzzer. Denver is not just known as the Mile High City renowned for its extreme altitude conditions, but it is now the home of the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the first time in the franchise’s 47 years in the league.

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