After 56 long seasons of banging their heads against the wall, the Nuggets finally kicked down the door.
Denver beat Miami 94-89 Monday to win the NBA Finals in five games. The series clincher was beautifully ugly, a bare-knuckle street fight befitting a cosmopolitan city that has never forgotten its dusty old cowtown heritage.
The beauty of winning the first championship in franchise history? It’s a debt repaid.
Paid in full to Alex English and Doug Moe and all the loyal fans who kept loving the Nuggets, despite the nearly 2,500 losses the franchise endured in the ABA and NBA before the one big victory nobody will ever forget.
When it was over, the first people coach Michael Malone, the son of a coach who grew up wanting to be a coach, called were his father and mother, who watched on television.
“They couldn’t be here tonight,” Malone said, “but they were with me.”
Want to know where the Nuggets coach gets his fierce competitiveness? Get a load of this: His parents were so intensely hyped for the Finals, they couldn’t watch the deciding game of this best-of-seven series in the same room.
Got to keep ’em separated.
Brendan Malone — a coach from the preps to the pros from 1967-2016, including a stint alongside Chuck Daly with the Bad Boy Pistons — sat in the basement of the couple’s home in Westchester County, N.Y. Maureen, his devoted spouse, devoured every pick and roll from the family room on the first floor.
“After the trophy presentation, I made a beeline for my office to call my mother and father,” Malone said. “And the funny thing is, I can’t call them at the same time, because they weren’t together in the same house. So I called my father first, and told him: ‘I love you. I wish you were here. And I’m so grateful for everything you sacrificed to help me get here.” He texts me every single day with coaching advice. And I use it.”
A Joker made them kings of the NBA. Nikola Jokic, the people’s MVP, scored 28 points and grabbed 16 rebounds. But it was his refusal to lose on a night when the Nuggets were plagued by early foul trouble and cursed by horrendous 3-point shooting that proved to be most valuable.
“I don’t care what anyone says, he’s one of the all-time great players,” teammate Michael Porter Jr. said.
One hour and one minute prior to the most anticipated basketball game in the history of the Front Range, Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke stood on the floor of Ball Arena near the home team bench.
“We’re at the doorstep,” Kroenke told me. “And now it’s time to kick down the door.”
No more than 60 seconds later, an usher who did not recognize the billionaire told Kroenke that it was time to clear the court and he had to go.
While not a big believer in omens, right then and there, I figured there was going to be nothing easy about this evening. (Worth noting: Kroenke took no offense to the usher shooing him, and never showed a hint of anger while the Nuggets chief of security scurried to the scene to explain the situation.)
Basketball can be an excruciatingly simple game. It’s make or miss. And the clunky first half of this close-out game seemed as long and hard as the city’s 56-year wait for an NBA championship.
The Nuggets went to the locker room down seven points because they couldn’t shoot straight, clanking 14 of 15 attempts from beyond the 3-point arc, with a 67-foot heave by Jokic at the second-quarter buzzer one of the few long shots that wasn’t doomed off the shooter’s fingertips.
But in the end, Denver won its championship on pure grit. The Nuggets wrestled away Game 5 from the Heat, which died hard.
The 56-year quest for a championship was like breaking rocks until the final buzzer. So it just feels right that the basket that finally put Denver ahead to stay, at 90-89 with 71 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, was a scrum, with Bruce Brown winning a tussle for the rebound off a Jamal Murray miss and putting it through the hoop, blowing the roof off Ball Arena.
Back in 1990, Michael Jordan had yet to win his first championship with the Bulls, but Josh Kroenke was a 10-year-old boy enraptured by all things M.J. He and his father would regularly make the pilgrimage from their home in Missouri to Chicago Stadium, where they would sit in the first row, almost close enough to touch the greatest player who ever lived.
“Watching Michael Jordan, Josh’s eyes were as big as saucers,” Kroenke said. “And if you want to know the truth, my eyes were as big as saucers.”
Basketball is the thrill of a lifetime, best shared with your father. Or mother. Or your best buddy.
“Growing up a basketball guy, this was a really tough nut to crack. But I’m really happy we were finally able to crack it for all the Nuggets fans,” said Josh Kroenke, a guard who appeared in 122 games for the University of Missouri from 1999-2004. “It means the world to win the NBA championship side by side with my Dad and give him something he never had but always wanted.”
While rolling through four rounds of the playoffs with a 16-4 record, Jokic thrilled us with the most dominating playoff performance the NBA has seen since Jordan in his prime, averaging 30 points, 13.5 rebounds and 9.5 assists. With utmost respect to Broncos legend John Elway, we all have the pleasure of bearing witness to the best player in the history of Denver sports.
The eyes of every long-suffering hoops lover in Colorado are now as big as saucers, and maybe a little misty. The rain of this soggy spring has turned to tears of unbridled joy.
Fire up the fire trucks. The first victory parade in Nuggets history? It won’t be the last.
“We’re not satisfied with one,” Malone said.
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