The Nuggets locker room looked like a high school science class 30 minutes after their season opener. The lab assignment was a dissection, but nobody could could seem to figure out how to extract the innards. Everyone was looking to their left or right, asking a classmate for help.
Except even the teacher didn’t know what he was doing.
While players studied their experiments, Michael Malone approached DeAndre Jordan’s corner of the room. The 52-year-old coach needed Jordan to spend a couple of minutes showing him all the bells and whistles of the Nuggets’ new object of intrigue: a tricked-out 2023 NBA championship ring.
The headlining feature is a ring within the ring — a smaller, “less flashy” (to quote Jordan) yet still diamond-encrusted accessory that slides in and out of the comically large hunk of jewelry. Turns out in the modern NBA, it’s two rings to rule them all. But Malone couldn’t figure out the dissection, so Jordan gave him the tutorial.
“It’s kind of like ‘National Treasure,’” Jordan told The Denver Post. “You just kind of like, Indiana Jones it. Just push around until something pops.”
Tokens of the first NBA championship in franchise history, the rings have 16 carats of diamonds, rubies and sapphires symbolizing Denver’s 16 playoff wins. After a stirring 119-107 win over Los Angeles on Tuesday night to begin their title defense, the Nuggets were free to return to their new toys in the locker room. They had gotten a brief introduction to the rings during a pregame banner ceremony, but “nobody wanted to drop theirs,” Jordan said, “so we didn’t want to take it off.”
There was cautious experimentation on the court. Bench veterans Jordan and Reggie Jackson were two of the first players to receive theirs, so they were ahead of the curve. “I think he showed me that it came apart,” Jackson said. “I got to show him the spinning and all. The dial.”
There’s a wheel-like portion of the ring that spins between two inscriptions: “1967,” the year the team was founded, and “2023,” the year it reached the mountain top.
So Jackson and Jordan became the postgame tutors. Christian Braun, like Malone, struggled. He was trying to provide his own demonstration for the cameras, but he couldn’t talk himself through the procedure.
“If you take it off, I don’t know how you do it, but there’s a second ring somewhere in here,” Braun said. “You can break it off? I really don’t know how to do it. How do you break this into the second ring?”
“You push it from the side,” Jackson said, leaning over.
The Nuggets’ plans for their rings varied. Jackson will show his off to family and friends then stow it away. Malone wants to honor his dad, who died two weeks ago, by putting his ring in his underwear drawer because that’s where his mom used to put Brendan Malone’s two NBA title rings for safekeeping. Jordan’s will go in “my case with all my (stuff) in it. All my good (stuff). My NBA (stuff). I’ll keep it revolving. I’ll probably waste a lot of batteries throughout the year, but it’ll be good.”
Michael Porter Jr. will display his at home also, “probably in my drip room,” he told The Post. “My closet that has all my clothes and shoes. I’ll probably find a place in there to put it.”
He plans to wear his, but only occasionally, taking after teammate Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who was the only player on the roster with a championship before last season. KCP brought his 2020 ring to Denver’s home playoff games for motivation. After Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Porter tried it on.
Braun doesn’t plan to wear his. Aaron Gordon does. To him, it’s fashion, not just a personal trophy. “I like rings,” he said, smiling wide. “I like rings, and I like grills.” Gordon has known the designer of the ring, Jason Arasheben, for his entire NBA career. Arasheben’s jewelry house is the maker of the chain Gordon often wears.
“You’ve got, like, the everyday (ring) on the inside,” Gordon said. “You could wear that every day.”
“If you want to tone it down a little bit, you can always do that,” Jordan said. “But me? I’ll probably just wear both.”
Some players were indifferent, or at least feigned indifference. Nikola Jokic said he didn’t even examine his after the game, turning to a Nuggets media relations staffer. “Where is it?”
Others were more sentimental. For Jamal Murray, the video shown during the ceremony was the emotional highlight of the evening. For Porter, it was the realization that everyone on the team staff also receives a ring, not just the players and coaches.
“The equipment managers, you’ve gotta highlight them. Gene (Marquez) and Sparky (Gonzales), those are my guys, and they just work so hard,” he said. “There’s a lot of people on this staff where I’m like, ‘Man, I wish they made a little bit more money.’ Even the guys who take care of us in the training room, they’re taking care of guys worth so many millions of dollars, but then they don’t get the credit that they deserve. So I just feel like it’s good, times like this when they get recognized.”
Even the Joker admitted the ceremony tugged at his heartstrings, despite his lack of interest in the ring itself. He was struck by the video clips shown of Nuggets fans celebrating in their homes as time expired in June.
“I think it’s amazing to see how many lives we impact, just playing basketball,” he said.
Once Malone finally had his ring figured out, he was feeling himself. “A.G., see you tomorrow, alright?” he said to Gordon, showing off his hand like a model on his way out the door.
