Fanatic
The year I was born (1985) the starting lineup for the Denver Nuggets was usually:
C - Wayne Cooper
PF - T.R. Dunn
SF - Alex English
SG - Fat Lever
PG - Calvin Natt
I was too young to remember having watched any basketball during this era, but I did watch it. My parents had it on TV and we even went to the city to see some games at the old McNichols Arena when I was just a baby.
They were coached by Doug Moe, a man that was well liked in my house and everywhere else in Colorado. Alex English is arguably the greatest Denver Nugget of all time, and he’s certainly in the top 3. He is an 8x All-Star, 1983 NBA Scoring champion, and member of the NBA Top 75. Fat Lever was no slouch, and was an All-Star twice over himself. This team was basically together for the entirety of the 1980’s and they were pretty good, although they never won any championships. Around the time I was born, they were getting knocked out of the Western Conference Finals. They would never achieve that level of success again though, usually getting eliminated in the first round. As the 1980’s rounded to a close, the ownership changed hands and the team was blown up.
This period in Nuggets history is still looked upon fondly. They played almost no defense, but they ran hard and scored often. Doug Moe was blunt and spoke candidly with the media. Alex English was one of the most exciting players in the NBA to watch. The NBA was growing in popularity, mostly on the backs of a popular rivalry between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. A league that had been called “too black” somehow cultivated two superstars of comparable skill and talent, one black and one white. America was all too eager to choose sides and tune in. While they were watching, the Chicago Bulls drafted Michael Jordan and he leapt into the air. The nation stood transfixed, jaws collectively on the floor. Skin color became irrelevant to most of them.
Ronald Reagan was president, and had won by such a wide margin that the first time I saw the electoral map I was certain it was fake. Reagan’s popularity created a lasting effect on the politics of both parties, and America slid toward his stances on drugs, crime and family values. America went to war with drugs. The drugs eventually won, or more accurately: America lost.
During his tenure, Congress voted 411-0 to prohibit dealing arms in the Contras-Iran conflict. The Raegan administration did it anyway, in secret. When that shoe dropped retribution was slow, limp or non-existent. The entire affair is considered an early example of post-truth politics, a state of being that America welcomes with open arms to this day.
The year I turned ten (1995) the starting lineup for the Denver Nuggets was usually:
C - Dikembe Mutombo
PF - Rodney Rogers
SF - Reggie Williams
SG - Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf
PG - Jalen Rose
This is the age and era in which I started to take an interest in the game. We had a hoop in our yard, so I had been shooting jumpers for a few years now. I had watched my parents become absorbed in the games but I was beginning to take an independent interest. Each morning over the paper, my dad and I would discuss the box scores, the genesis for what would become my lifelong obsession with organizing chaotic activity into numbers.
Mutombo was a Congolese born superstar, and he protected the rim relentlessly. Today he is widely regarded as one of the greatest shot blockers of all time. Rodney Rogers once scored 9 points in 9 seconds to bring the Nuggets from down 8 to up 1 with 12 seconds left against the Utah Jazz. A Jazz player scored at the last second and the Nuggets lost, emblematic of the era. Jalen Rose was cool, undeniably. He was a member of the famed Michigan “fab-5” which impacted the culture of the sport and world at large (they are why players of this era had baggy shorts, among other things). He was so cool that today Jalen is the most popular name in the NBA.
In my house though, Mahmoud was the favorite. Mahmoud had Tourette Syndrome, and you could tell. The joke was that while the opposing team shot free-throws he could yell whatever he wanted under the guise of his condition. He had the smoothest jump shot I had ever seen and strong convictions about his god and his country. Mahmoud did not stand for the National Anthem. He believed the flag was a symbol of oppression. Eventually they suspended him for this. Not long after, he was traded. Not long after that he played his last game for any NBA team, way before his talent had dried up. This was not discussed much back then if at all, and it went entirely over my ten year old head.
In 1994 the Nuggets made the playoff as the 8th seed (worst seed) and played the Seattle Super-Sonics (best team). They lost the first two games, but that second game was the last one they lost in the series and they became the first 8-seed to defeat the 1-seed in NBA history. I’ll never forget it. As the last seconds ticked off the clock in overtime of that last game, Mutombo grabbed one final rebound and collapsed to the floor. A camera-man jostled for position as excitement and chaos surrounded him. Mutombo clasped the ball with both hands, looking up at that camera with tears of joy in his eyes. A happiness most pure, and I shared it with him from the living room. My team just made history. I would never meet these men, I would never understand them or their strange lives, and I would never contribute anything to their success or failure. Yet, this was still my team and my happiness was real.
They lost in the next round, of course. Players came and went. Antonio McDyess was our best player for a while and he came, went, came back, and went again. Mutombo went to Atlanta. Denver became a place of great basketball mediocrity.
Bill Clinton was president, but Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. Conservative policies went screaming through the legislative process, greased up by hero/villain Newt Gingrich and pushed across the finish line. Highlights include the Taking Back Our Streets Act (anti-crime type stuff), the Personal Responsibility Act (no welfare for mothers under 18), the American Dream Restoration Act (tax credits for married families with children), and the Job Creation Act (tax incentives for small business). All of this was a direct result of the vision outlined by Reagan in the ‘80s for what the Republican party should do when they eventually gain control of congress.
Disagreement over the budget resulted in a government shutdown, and then another one. Back then, this was unusual. Disagreement over the budget is the fundamental difference between our two parties, but for the first time compromise had become untenable. Polls and the eventual re-election of Clinton to a second term indicate that most Americans blamed the Republicans. Newt Gingrich in particular. We began to see something we would come to know as commonplace in the future. An asshole with power, conviction, and adeptness at carving a cleft between two ideals which cannot be bridged. Many Americans associate themselves with one of these teams based on which side of that cleft they stand. Completely separate topics may arise in which they have no opinion, or in which they may hold a natural tendency for the opposite team’s stance and yet, they remain staunchly Red or Blue as the case may be.
Bill Clinton got his dick sucked in the oval office, and not by his wife. We didn’t find out in 1995, but eventually we did. Today, depending on your team, he remains the most morally bereft president of all time. He waffled a bit before he admitted to his infidelity, but eventually he did admit to it. Here and now, squarely in the era of post-truth politics, you have to wonder why.
The year I turned 20 (2005) the starting lineup for the Denver Nuggets was usually:
C - Marcus Camby
PF - Kenyon Martin
SF - Carmelo Anthony
SG - Greg Buckner
PG - Andre Miller
The Nuggets finished the ‘90s and started the ‘00s in embarrassment, nearly setting the record for fewest wins in a season (11) and tying the record for the worst losing streak of all time (23 consecutive games). A fan taunted the head coach, and he yelled back “Go drink another beer, you Mexican piece of shit”. This was not well received by anyone. They seemed incapable of drafting good players, many times selecting guys that would be washed out of the league within a few seasons and passing up superstars to do it. In 1998 they selected Raef LaFrentz 3rd in the draft instead of Vince Carter, Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce (all in the Hall of Fame) for example.
My school was considered poor or… something anyway, so we got free tickets through a local charity. As an aside, this charity was funded by the porn industry, and all of us knew it. We sat in a sectioned off part of the arena called “Eddie’s Kids”. Eddie is somewhat fascinating, and I could probably write an entire piece on that guy. That would be an absurdly long aside though, so I digress.
As a result of this charity, I attended many games back then. My wardrobe consisted of an untold quantity of shirts I acquired via t-shirt cannon. The arena was practically empty, and the odds of scoring a shirt were high.
By the 2002-2003 season, the Nuggets were tied for the worst team in the NBA which was actually a good thing. That draft class was one for the ages. It would have been nice to get the first pick, but it went to the other worst team in the NBA. The Cleveland Cavaliers selected LeBron James. If we had the 2nd pick, we would’ve blown it on Darko Milicic, whom the Detroit Pistons selected. He was never any good, so we dodged a bullet there. We picked 3rd, we got Carmelo Anthony, and we instantly became good. This fucking guy could hoop. In those early years of their careers, it was not clear whether LeBron was better. They made the playoffs that next season, and every other season for the rest of Melo’s time with the team.
In one such playoff game, I watched Kevin Garnett and the Minnesota Timberwolves eliminate the Nuggets handily. I was sat next to the entrance/exit for the Timberwolves players. A white hot hatred erupted from the Nuggets fans in my region, and many people threw drinks and food onto the opposing players as they walked off the court. Hateful things were yelled, plenty loud enough for those guys to hear them. I was 18, going on 19 and I was swept up in it too. If I had something to throw I may have thrown it. If I had something to say, I probably said it. I was there with my little brother, and I remember driving home and talking about it with him. Both of us surprised by how we had behaved. I remember thinking that violence—real violence—was just at our collective fingertips, in that crowd. That it was good those players, whom none of us knew or actually even disliked, didn’t linger too long at that spot. Good that we were separated by some railings or whatever.
George W. Bush was in his second term. America was at war with Terror, but more specifically at war with Iraq and Afghanistan. The specifics are actually pretty damn confusing. That feeling I had, looking out at those Timberwolves players, it was familiar. I had watched Bush break the whole thing down just a few years prior. We’re all of us on the same team, thanks in totality to having been born here. I didn’t need him to explain that part of it, I knew all about teams. I could feel it in my very bones, like everyone else. Violence was at our entire nation’s collective fingertips and soon it was firmly within our grasp. But, a few years is a long time to live this way. Too long. People were starting to ask some good questions, and new teams were forming around the answers. What did Iraq have to do with all this anyway? Did anyone honestly think there were Weapons of Mass Destruction? What’s the end game here? What’s going on in Guantanamo?
The year I turned 30 (2015) the starting lineup for the Denver Nuggets was usually:
C - Nikola Jokic
PF - Kenneth Faried
SF - Danilo Gallinari
SG - Gary Harris
PG - Emmanuel Mudiay
This was not a good team, but anyone with even the slightest interest in basketball will recognize at least one name on that roster. The year prior, famously during a Taco Bell commercial, my beloved Nuggets selected Nikola Jokic with the 41st pick in the draft. Just another in a long line of busted white goofs with a European name, we all thought. All 30 teams passed him up in the draft, including the Nuggets who drafted another player at his same position in the first round. Perhaps a rebalancing of a karmic debt, years in the red from having drafted so poorly, this ended up as the best draft selection in the history of sports.
Nobody expected him to be any good. Yet, as I write this, he is the best basketball player on the planet and it isn’t even close. His greatness is undeniable, if hard to explain or define. It isn’t like watching Jordan dance through the air, cheating gravity and scoring on all five defenders. You have to look a lot closer with Jokic. You have to account for the rest of the players on the court, the way that he does so effortlessly. You have to watch some things twice, to appreciate what he’s done and how he did it. In the end though, you have to admit: this guy is amazing.
He’s won three league MVP’s and been robbed of two more. His individual accolades pile up faster than they can be accounted for. His stat lines boggle the mind, and each season he produces several games unlike any to have been played in the history of the game. Where he goes, so to go the Nuggets.
Back in 2015 though, he was only the starting center on an otherwise shit team.
Obama was president. He was charismatic, and a lot of us were proud that he represented us on the world stage. Things seemed to be changing rather quickly in America. We were rebounding from a terrible recession, which hit my generation particularly hard upon entering the work force. Healthcare was inching toward becoming a right rather than a privilege. Laws banning same sex marriage were being overturned left and right. Minimum wage was going up in several states. The legality of marijuana was becoming closer to that of alcohol. Bruce Jenner, whom all men of a certain age wanted to be, was actually a woman the whole time. The Supreme Court ruled that our method for carrying out executions was cruel and unusual. They followed that up by ruling that the EPA was too soft, and that we needed to have less toxic emissions from our power plants.
All of that in only the first six months of that year. During that same time, a lot of people announced they would be running for president. Teams were forming. Where many saw these changes as positive, many more did not.
One candidate in particular was something of a joke. Nobody expected him to get very far. As I write this now, he’s serving his second term. He is either the greatest president of all time, or he is the worst. It comes down to which team you happen to be on.
I’ll be 40 this year. We’re going to have to wait and see who starts for the Nuggets this season. Things are currently in flux. Nikola Jokic carried them to a championship in 2023 though, the first in franchise history. I was there. Me, my mom and my brother. My dad would’ve cried tears of joy to see it I think, were he still alive. When the final buzzer sounded, the crowd erupted. A lot of the people in the crowd were like me, and had been watching this team for their entire life. A lot of them were my mom’s age actually, and attending with their middle-aged kids.
My mom, tiny and non-threatening, wandered past security onto the floor with the players. My brother and I lost sight of her, and became briefly concerned. While I tried unsuccessfully to follow her Alex English strolled past me. I hadn’t seen him in real life since I was a baby, attending games in my mom’s arms. It was a special thing to see him so close and in that moment. Just as he went out of view my mom wandered back over through the fray. A huge smile on her face, vibrating with the joy of it. Me too.
How do you account for this happiness? Or the very real dislike of the other team? How do we become so fanatical?
I love the sport. It was my first love, really. I still have dreams where my knees don’t hurt and my body moves like it used to. I enjoy watching it too, for the poetry and beauty I see when these guys perform at such a high level. But, I only watch the Nuggets. That is the team I care about, and I need to care about the outcome of the game. So, there has to be an opponent. Somebody with a different colored shirt than I have on. In order for my team to win, I have to hope the other team loses.
It’s just a game though, thank god. Nothing to lose sleep over.