Denver Nuggets Liput
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About Denver Nuggets
There were some good teams over the years at Mile High City. Not outstanding teams, might you, not even great teams. Just good teams, led by some good players – OK, some of them were outstanding – that were good enough for…. Basically, not much more than a division title here and there.
All it took was a certain Serbian to change all of that.
It's mind boggling that a franchise that was born in 1967 won its first Western Conference only in 2023, went on to its first NBA finals only in 2023 and eventually won its first NBA title only in 2023. Up to that point the city in the middle of the Rocky Mountains was a stop where the weather was awful, especially during winter, the air was hard to breath, players didn't especially were eager to join and the Denver Nuggets organization was perceived as kind of, well, let's just say that other organizations were rated higher by professional standards. Much higher.
Denver Nuggets is one of four members of the late ABA teams still playing in the NBA today. The Nuggets reached the ABA finals and lost the series to the New York Nets (today's Brooklyn Nets) in 1976, the last season before the league folded and merged into the NBA.
The Nuggets won the Midwest Division title in their inaugural season in the NBA, 1977-78, but didn't make much waves in the playoffs. There were some fun years after the team hired former North Carolina and ABA star Doug Moe as head coach in 1981, as Moe's up-tempo offense was exciting to watch. Led by the Nuggets all-time great center Dan Issel and high scoring forwards and NBA all-Stars Alex English and Kiki Vandeweghe, Moe's Nuggets were always on the run, perfecting their fast break offense and always put a lot of points on the scoring sheet. Defense-wise, Moe just didn't care about it. In 1984, Denver traded Vandeveghe to the Portland Trail Blazers for point guard Lafayette "Fat" Lever, a move that made the team, well, even more fun to watch, and even faster on the fast break. The joke in the NBA back in those days was that if opposite teams didn't suffer enough from lack of oxygen in the high altitude of Denver, Lever made them feel even worse. But Denver had one major problem - a team that plays in purple and gold named the Los Angeles Lakers, who dominated the Western Conference that decade.
And still, excluding a divisional title here and there, there was no playoff glory.
In 1991, Denver drafted Congo-born, Georgetown University star center Dikembe Mutombo. Denver have found its defensive force, as Mutombo became one of the most dominant forces in the middle. But the power ranking in the west those days shifted from Lakers to the Karl Malone-led Utah Jazz.
The team drafted Carmelo Anthony in 2003 and some years later traded for superstar Allen Iverson. Still, the brilliant duo wasn't enough for playoff success.
Luck began to change in 2014, when the Nuggets hired Michael Malone, son of former NBA head coach Branden Malone, as head coach, and went into a long process of rebuild. In the second round of the draft the same year, Denver drafted center Nikola Jokic. The Serbian went on the become a five-time all-star and a two-time NBA MVP. The pieces were starting to move into place, but not before Denver fell to eventual champions Golden State Warriors in the first round of the 2022 playoff.
This year, there was no stopping the Nuggets. 53 wins during the regular season, defeating Minnesota in the first round of the playoff, defeating heavily-favorite, Kevin Durant-led Phoenix in the second round and sweeping the Lakers in the conference finals, before a 4-1 in over the Miami Heat in the finals.
Finally, after all those years.
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