![]() Issel guesses this special run will leave Jokic as the best player to ever wear a Nuggets uniform, followed by guard Jamal Murray, with all the Nuggets of the past - Issel, Alex English, Thompson, Carmelo Anthony and the rest - moving down a notch. Now, all the talk in Denver is about an NBA title. Dominique Wilkins, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Nate Robinson, Dee Brown, Vince Carter and even 5-foot-6 Spud Webb are among those who have taken home titles. J and Thompson started has become an annual staple. That contest would become a staple of All-Star weekend in 1984, when the Nuggets, now entrenched in the NBA, hosted the gala. Everybody’s rooting for the Nuggets.”īack in the day, nobody sold the Nuggets harder than their general manager, Carl Scheer, a visionary who made an art out of padding attendance figures and, in a single stroke of genius, came up with the dunk contest. “I started getting thousands of texts from all my friends all over the country. “I used whatever’s left of my 44-inch vertical leap, just yelling and screaming,” Thompson said. The player known for his explosive vertical leap jumped out of bed as the horn sounded and his former team reached new heights. Thompson said he was in bed watching the closing seconds of the clincher. Making it more sweet was that they did it against the establishment - the Los Angeles Lakers, a team that had beaten them in seven of seven playoff series over the decades before Denver swept LeBron James and his Lakers out of the playoffs. It took 47 seasons in the NBA to make their first Finals. This year, Jones & Co., are celebrating the fact that it’s the Nuggets who are good. ![]() “We really felt like we had we had a score to settle for that, to show that the ABA teams were good.” “We had more of a chip on our shoulder than most of the teams in the NBA because we had come from the ABA,” said Bobby Jones, the Nuggets’ defensive specialist in the 1970s who would go on to win an NBA title with a Philadelphia 76ers team led by Dr. Any title or deep trip through the playoffs by any of those teams has always been met with excitement among that prideful group of ABA alumni. Of the teams, only the Spurs have won it all - five times, to be exact. Until this season, all but the Nuggets have played in at least one NBA Finals. The ABA took in the teams in San Antonio, New York, Indiana and Denver. The next season, the ABA and NBA agreed to a merger of sorts. He is such a fan of the modern-day Nuggets that a signed Nikola Jokic jersey is a coveted keepsake in his trophy room, which includes one of those multicolored basketballs, signature shoes with “DT” on them, along with some memorabilia of Thompson’s national title run with North Carolina State in 1974. Thompson’s career with the Nuggets straddled their ABA and NBA days. I want them to finish the job that we didn’t quite get done.” “This Nuggets team, we’re pulling for them. “The new NBA is like the old ABA,” David Thompson, ‘The Skywalker,’ told The Associated Press in a phone interview from his home in Charlotte, North Carolina. ![]() One of the nicest compliments those old ABA Nuggets can pay to today’s group: These Nuggets remind them of them. Denver hosts Miami in Game 1 on Thursday. Nearly 50 years after the breakup of the old, renegade league, with its red-white-and-blue basketballs and the 3-point arc that has redefined the modern game, the Nuggets finally broke through to become the last of the four ABA teams - Spurs, Pacers, Nets and Nuggets - who survived the 1976 merger to make the NBA Finals. ![]() Regardless of what next season brings, fans are savoring this momentous occasion.DENVER (AP) - Gone, but never forgotten, the ABA is enjoying a curtain call this season - all thanks to the Denver Nuggets. They will be especially pertinent given that there is a decent chance the 2023-24 Bucs causes the same pain and heartbreak as the teams who first donned the creamsicle look back in the moribund 1970s and 80s. The uniforms will be a welcome dose of nostalgia for swashbuckler fans everywhere. The Creamsicles officially return October 15 against the Detroit Lions. People have been clamoring for this for a long time, expecting to see them back last year before global supply problems provided yet another misstep to a season full of them. Prepare for a sea of orange to burst through the Raymond James Stadium tunnel on Sunday, October 15th when Tampa hosts the Detroit Lions. The franchise is turning back the clock with the official return of their vintage “Creamsicle” uniforms, per the team's Twitter account. In the midst of so much uncertainty, Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans can at least expect some good news to come their way this October. ![]()
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