A TESTAMENT TO THE DENVER NUGGETS

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Melbourne, Australia to anywhere in the States is far.

It’s a proper long-haul flight across the Pacific.

I was a teenager in the nineties, and like a lot of kids around that time, the NBA was a thing.

That’s impressive, seeing as we had our own games, like cricket and Aussie rules football.

Yet we would keep track of the NBA via single line scores in the newspaper, a long form basketball rag that came out once a week, monthly SLAM magazines, and a game a week on local TV.

Not much juice.

But there we were, and we knew all the players names, and sometimes had the jerseys, and it mattered to us.

Around that time, the local league called the NBL was also going well, and there were some American fellows that made a good name down under for themselves, and a few of our best managed to get a spotty run in the States, like Andrew Gaze and Shane Heal.

Luc Longley was perhaps best known by virtue of association, and he was emblematic of Aussie stoicism if not prodigious talent, and still revered for it to this day.

Because of this geographic isolation, for those that were inclined to anything more than a wholesale award of allegiances to either Jordan, or anyone else that seemed to be winning at the time, teams took on unique characters in observation that had nothing to do with where they were from.

Because we weren’t from those places, one was afforded the luxury of choosing who to support.

I chose the Denver Nuggets.

It was the first-round win as the 8 over the Sonics in 94 that would define those early years.

There will always be the iconic image of Mutombo clasping the ball in both hands, prostrate on the ground.

The triumph of the ultimate underdog.

How I loved that team.

It was Robert Pack, the relentless 6-footer who seemed hell bent on always trying to flush on those much taller.

It was LaPhonso Ellis, with that weird single-handed clasp on the ball and wild look in his eyes.

It was the immortal Abdul-Rauf, so inspirational already for both his skill and his conscience.

It was the grit of Rodney Rogers, and the spotty minutes for Darnell Mee, later to pop up in Australia.

And it was Brian Williams, yet to become Bison Dele – who completed the journey into esotericism by disappearing into the very same body of water that separated us down here from the league.

The Nuggets were it. The Nuggets from Denver.

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There would be other dalliances along the way.

I always loved those teams that seemed intent on sharing the ball, not relying primarily on force or physical prowess, but on a synchronised collective skill.

As though the game could at times transcend those whose individual gifts shone brighter than their peers.

Chris Webber’s Kings were a source of absolute delight, his passing as a big man leaving an indelible print on what I thought the game could look like in aspiration.

The Rasheed Wallace Blazers were another passion project – that team – with its apparent reputation, its steadfast refusal to conform to the norms of the day – all that talent on one roster.

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And so it was that at the start of the decade that was also the start of a new millennia, I noted a repetitive undercurrent to my fandom from afar.

That those teams and those themes seemed constantly pitched in opposition to the objectives of and perhaps for the Los Angeles Lakers.

My desire for meritocracy juxtaposed heavily against David Stern’s forever infamous but honest quote from 2004.

As someone that wanted to believe that seemingly insurmountable barriers to success could indeed be overcome, the repetition of these themes beyond Tim Donaghy’s eventual statements in court felt eerie.

Nor was it limited to the in-game eye test.

It was the evident belief of management that the arduous labour of team building, and team chemistry, was the labour of other franchises.

That the stars would always want to play in L.A.

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The league continued to shift, both in terms of the way teams would be built, and most radically in terms of what the games looked like.

Super teams became the norm, as generational players laboured for hometowns only to call press conferences to take their talents elsewhere, with more talented friends.

Math and metrics permeated decision making, centres became shooters, and Steph bent the dimensions of the court to his persuasion.

Where other key American sports opted for attempts at control and curation, Silver embraced the online revolution, and the individual expression of players’ points of view to fantastic effect.

That a random fan sitting in the wilds of Melbourne could feel this level of agency in a sport conducted almost as far away as could be is surely a success by some measure.

The popularity of the game in every corner of this planet is testament to the same.

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My friends and I never stopped watching the NBA, and as our lives moved along it became one of the main things that kept us together.

Our personalities bore out in the different parts of the game and the characters that we gravitated toward over time.

The league and technology made it easier than ever to keep across not just what was happening on the court, but the narratives that kept the game at the forefront of our attention.

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In 2014, the Nuggets selected Jokic in the second round, and anyone reading this is aware of what has transpired since.

The steady improvement from the Nuggets under Malone has of course coincided with Nikola Jokic’ increasing centrality to their play.

There are no superlatives left to move the conversation forward in describing what he does on the court, nor what he does for this team.

But it is obvious that everyone with whom he plays becomes a better version of their basketball selves.

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To revere Jokic is to celebrate the intensely self-deprecating nature of the individual, best expressed in the circumspect expression on his face when asked questions that make explicit a cultural standard of self-aggrandisement for which he has no reference.

To see him hold his head as he wrestles through the mundanity of a presser, the part of his job he must surely like least, always conducted in a language not his own.

It is the moment when he is pressed into referring to himself as ‘the best player on the team, or whatever’.

His evident love of family, and of simple things that can still also be good.

It is the moments when he says, ‘I don’t know’, surely the most honest response one can give and yet such a counterpoint to the accustomed fare that is served when a microphone is present.

Defined by his endless references to playing the right way, and making the next best play, whatever the circumstance.

A man who has transcended helio-centrism and who lifted an injury-decimated Nuggets team to 48 wins in the 21-22 season.

A man who has now brought this version of the Nuggets past the latest mercenary pastiche, to face yet another, in the Finals of the 22-23 West.

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It is all there for this team.

For those grounded in the adversity of injuries that are recovered within the privacy of closed rooms and cold winters.

For the heart of Murray’s return after an endless rehabilitation.

For Gordon’s sacrifice of individual plaudits.

For Michael Porter’s comeback, and composure under critique.

For the gentlemanly grit of KCP’s emergent legacy.

For Bruce Brown’s Swiss-Army knife like smarts, for everyone’s favourite uncle Jeff, the radically upright Chris Braun, and a bench that must stay ready.

For the grit of Malone, forever urging this team toward what they might become.

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To win for those who believe that the sum can indeed be greater than its parts.

To win for teams that take years to build.

To win to end the exceptionalism, just for a time, of those that feel entitled to cut corners because of a name or a tradition.

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Return Nikola to Sombor, free of the last of our requirements for greatness, surely a larger burden for us than for him.

Win not for sheer physical primacy, but for a gift of sharing that transcends the limits of what the game looks like, even for the other very best who play it.

Win for those who crave to peer into the light, just for a moment, to see what no one else can see.

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[https://collettecap.substack.com/p/a-testament-to-the-denver-nuggets](https://collettecap.substack.com/p/a-testament-to-the-denver-nuggets)

by bizjuan